Councils must abide by Govt directive to write off debts

The directive by Government that all the 92 rural and urban councils should write off debts owed by residents for rates and bills from February 2009 to 10 June this year, should  bring relief to residents, many of whom were on the verge of losing their houses and other valuable properties. Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Minister Ignatius Chombo on Monday directed all the local authorities to write off residents’ debts from February 2009 to 30 June this year.

Minister Chombo said the Government’s directive followed complaints by residents’ associations over arrears caused by unjustified increases in rates and bills by MDC-T led councils especially in urban areas. Minister Chombo urged Zesa Holdings and the Zimbabwe National Water Authority to embrace the same policy to bring relief to the people. He said he had since dispatched circulars to councils informing them of the policy line.

Minister Chombo said while Government acknowledged that residents should pay their bills for the sustenance of effective and efficient service delivery, economic sanctions had made it difficult for the generality of the citizenry to meet their obligations. “Since our migration from the Zimbabwean dollar era to the multi-currency regime in February 2009, the residents have by and large failed to pay their dues to councils and have accumulated huge debts which have become intractable”, said Minister Chombo.

We want to applaud the Government’s move which, as already stated, will bring relief to residents who were finding it difficult if not impossible to clear their arrears to service providers such as councils. Many councils including the Bulawayo City Council had resorted to auctioning residents’ household property and in some extreme cases houses in order to recover money owed. In Bulawayo almost every week council was auctioning residents’ household properties to recover money owed.

It seems councils were no longer sensitive to the plight of their residents and we want to believe this has prompted Government to intervene. It is a fact that most of the residents have lost employment as a result of the economic challenges facing the country and the hardest hit is Bulawayo where an estimated 20 000 workers lost their jobs following the closure of many companies in the city. Some of the companies have relocated to other cities and towns citing challenges such as water shortage and loss of market.

Many of these workers who lost jobs are the ones that are supposed to pay rates, water and other service charges to councils hence the high default rate being recorded by many councils. Many families are finding it difficult to meet even the basics such as food, clothing, school fees and rentals as most breadwinners are out of employment. Many have been forced to turn to the informal sector where they are trying to eke a living from buying and selling goods.

The competition is however very stiff in this sector given the number of people involved and as such not much can be realised of profits. We are very cognisant of the fact that the Government’s move is going to hit hard most councils given the fact that many of them were already facing cash-flow challenges. Many of the councils are in fact failing to meet their obligations such as paying salaries and in some cases the councils are actually in arrears.

The Government directive therefore calls for further tightening of the belt. The councils have to forgo luxuries and where salaries were divorced from the prevailing economic realities, the councils should revise the salaries downwards.  Many councils had pegged their salaries too high and as such some of them were failing to pay the salaries. We want at this juncture to call upon Minister Chombo to make a follow up on his directive to ensure it is enforced.

It is our belief that once the residents start on a clean slate, they will strive to ensure they pay their bills every month to avoid accumulating arrears.