adminRural to urban migration was in the past driven by job opportunities in the towns where a better life awaited those that secured employment in the various industries. However, the demise of much of industry due to the increasingly competitive world trading environment at a time when countries such as Zimbabwe are saddled with sanctions, has meant that a good number of workers that used to rely on their earnings to pay for services have since fallen on hard times and can no longer afford to pay for such services.
We reported in our Saturday edition that more than 12 000 Bulawayo residents had not paid council water bills since the introduction of the multi-currency system in 2009. Council has been on a serious disconnection exercise whereby those that owed the local authority had their water supplies cut off as a way of forcing them to pay.
However, council has acknowledged that the disconnections were registering limited success with even their teams sent to cut off supplies being threatened by residents.
Council is now looking into alternative means to recover more than $62 million that it is owed and pointed out that suspension of its debt collection since 2009 to offer respite to residents seemed to have resulted in residents not making any payments.
“The stance taken by council may have created a culture of not paying bills. This culture has seen more than 12 000 customers not making a single payment since 2009,” read a council report.
What this shows is that council needs a new revenue generation model that takes into account such challenges as joblessness among our people. The council has so many facilities around the city from which it is getting very little in long leases whose fees are laughable. We believe it is about time council got fair value from those that are running successful business ventures from its facilities instead of burdening residents, some of them elderly pensioners, with bills that they cannot afford.
We are not advocating a situation whereby people deliberately decide not to pay for council services but we are saying these should be affordable to the majority. We believe the Government has an obligation to ensure that the army of the unemployed in urban areas are also catered for in as far as income generating projects are concerned. We are happy that there are schemes targeted at pensioners to assist them escape poverty and be able to fend for their families.
We believe, however, that facilities such as the Distressed Industries and Marginalised Areas Fund could have a greater impact by absorbing more employees through the re-opening of closed firms in the city. Even the council pointed out in its report that the liquidity challenges of the residents required a national solution and it is our view that such a solution should start at the local level through support for small business in the city and even venturing into business by council such as the proposed gold mining venture, the traditional cash-cow brewery venture, Aisleby farming project and many other potential money-makers as the parks section, which has lost almost all weddings to private properties whose owners are making a killing through having wedding parties take pictures on their premises.
The challenge is on our councillors to find ways of empowering their wards so that residents benefit from council policies and eventually repay that through increased inflows into council coffers by paying for services rendered. Local authorities can deny residents services to a point of causing disease but without a way out of the growing poverty such moves would be in vain.
Online Reporter