Midlands councils comply with Govt directive to write-off debts

Midlands Correspondent
A MAJORITY of local authorities in the Midlands Province have started working on modalities of writing off residents’ water and rates bills in line with the directive by the Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development, Dr Ignatius Chombo.Minister Chombo instructed all local authorities to write-off outstanding bills they were owed by residents accrued between February 2009 and June this year.

In separate interviews yesterday, Gweru City Council, Redcliff and Runde Rural District councils said they were now looking into their audit books with a view to implementing the Government directive.

Gweru town clerk, Mr Daniel Matawu, said the council has since withdrawn all the names of defaulters they had surrendered to their debt collectors.

“What we have done as Gweru City Council is that we have withdrawn all the names of defaulters we had handed over to our debt collectors in an attempt to recover our money that residents owed us in unpaid water bills and rates.

“We will then look into our books to try and do the calculations. Obviously there is a lot of work that needs to be done before we could effect this,” he said.

Redcliff town clerk, Mrs Elizabeth Gwatipedza, said they were going to work on implementing the Minister’s directive starting from Monday.
“At the moment, I am on leave but we will be working on implementing the directive on Monday when I am back at work,” she said.

Runde Rural District Council chief executive officer, Mr Godern Moyo said the council held a meeting to discuss the issue of outstanding bills.
He said they were going to start updating their clients’ accounts in line with the Government directive soon after the elections.

“We have met as council to discuss ways on how to implement the Minister’s directive. We then shelved the matter because some stakeholders were busy preparing for the harmonised elections. We will look into the matter soon after the elections,” he said.