Chronicle Editor
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
THE Hwange Local Board (HLB) is considering taking legal action against rate payers who are in arrears for more than three months.
The debt has, according to HLB town secretary, Mr Ndumiso Mdlalose ballooned to over $100 million.
In their recent newsletter, Mr Mdlalose said efforts by the local authority to recover its debts from defaulters have not yielded much thus compelling it to consider litigation.
“We have rate defaulters that have gone beyond 120 days and we have issued them with final demand letters and from our computation we are being owed more than $ 100 million in non-paid rates.
“Council is currently owed $14 million by rate payers that have not paid for more than three months. We exhausted all other means to try and convince the defaulters to pay. We were then left with one option, taking the legal route because the challenge we have is that people are reluctant to pay,” he said.
He said that at the beginning of the year the local authority embarked on various strategies aimed at recovering its dues chief among them being the door-to-door debt collection exercise but not much has been realised from these efforts.
Mr Mdlalose said Councillors have also played a part in sensitising residents about the importance of paying rates.
He said the non-payment of rates was hampering Council’s efforts to offer seamless and efficient service delivery as well as its ability to embark or complete its vital projects not mentioning its capacity to meet its variou obligations including statutory ones.
“If we had that ($100 million) we would have done a number of projects which we would have seen us meeting most of our obligations. Empumalanga Phase I, Empumalanga’s DRC section and Baobab’s T-Section are the suburbs with the highest number of defaulters,” said Mr Mdlalose.
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