Residents owe Rusape council $6 m

Senior Reporter
RUSAPE Town Council has engaged a debt collecting law firm to recover at least $6 million owed by residents in unpaid lease agreements.

Rusape Town secretary Mr Joshua Maligwa on Wednesday told The Manica Post that their operations have been suffocated by the non-committal residents prompting council to use the stick.

Rusape’s accounts have been qualified from 2012 to date owing to the large chunk of uncollected revenue which, residents have neither acknowledged nor gave a timeframe to clear.

The landlords caught in the cob-web of litigation are from Magamba (1800 housing units), Sanzaguru (1200 units), Silverbow (500 units), Crocodile (265 units), Mabvazuva Extension (180 units), UVE (268 units), VE Park (100 units) and Garikai (100 units).

A lease is a contract between a the local authority (lessor and the landowner (lessee) that allows the lessee rights to occupy and develop the land while paying the intrinsic land value over a period of time.

After payment, one is entitled to a title deed of their property.

The lease fees vary from $45 to $500 depending on stand size and location, per year and payable over five years.

“Our operations were critically affected, for example in Magamba, which has been dubbed the ‘Epworth of Rusape’ because there are no roads, sewer, water and electricity because, while the residents are busy building nice houses, they are not paying lease fees for the development of their area,” said Mr Maligwa.

“We are encouraging residents to approach our offices and sign debt acknowledgements plus payment plans,” said Mr Maligwa.

Mr Maligwa said council engaged Harare-based law firm Mangwana and Partners as a last resort to force compliance by non-committal residents.

“Some residents were forth coming while some were not. The outstanding $6 million resulted in our accounts being qualified because this large debt had neither been acknowledged nor guaranteed.

“External auditors insisted on a strategy to ensure that the $6 million debt is acknowledged and since we had no agreements with the residents, we had to bring in a lawyer through debt collection,” said Mr Maligwa.

Manicaland Provincial Administrator, Mr Fungai Mbetsa recently implored the local authority to rectify its past mistakes by prioritising the provision of water and sanitary facilities in the town’s fastest growing suburb of Magamba.

Magamba was akin a ticking time bomb whose consequences are in the same league with social upheavals in Epworth.