Residents stop paying council bills

Temba Dube Senior Reporter
A majority of Bulawayo residents have reportedly stopped paying council bills, as they adopt a wait-and-see attitude, following a Government directive for the country’s local authorities to cancel debts accumulated since 2009. According to figures released by council yesterday, monthly revenue collections have declined by almost 65 percent from about $6,9 million to around $2,4 million. More than 12 000 residents in the city have, according to council, not paid a single cent since dollarisation in 2009. Residents are seemingly unaware that bills accrued after 30 June are payable in full as they are not covered by the Government directive.

The Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development, Dr Ignatius Chombo ordered the country’s 92 local authorities to write off bills that accrued between February 2009 and 30 June this year.
The directive excludes companies.

In an interview yesterday, council’s public relations officer Miss Bongiwe Ngwenya said the development was negatively affecting council operations.

She said the full details of debts cancelled by the local authority were likely to be available today.
“We have written off some debts. Residents will see the amounts that have been written off when they start receiving their bills this week.
“However, following announcement of the order to cancel bills, most residents have not been forthcoming with payments. So far, we have received about $2,4 million from residents compared to about $4,5 million for the same period last month. Before the directive, we were collecting as much as $6,9 million every month,” said Miss Ngwenya.

She encouraged residents to pay their bills saying if they relaxed, they were likely to accumulate new bills that would also become a problem to clear.

“As council, we are now struggling to buy diesel to fuel our vehicles for basic operations like garbage collection, attending to burst pipes and sewers,” said Miss Ngwenya.

She said the local authority feared a scenario whereby it might soon ask residents to boil water before drinking it as low revenue collection affected ability to buy water treatment chemicals.

“If residents do not pay their bills, we will soon face challenges in paying salaries on time, meeting statutory obligations like VAT and paye to Zimra. It will also be difficult to pay service providers like Zesa and we may also start accumulating a salary backlog,” said the public relations officer. The directive, made just before the 31 July harmonised elections, had been dismissed by Government detractors as a Zanu-PF ploy to buy votes.

However, recent developments have shown that Government was sincere in issuing the order as a number of local authorities have complied.

Harare City Council, which was reportedly owed about $400 million, has written off $330 million while Chitungwiza scrapped $40 million.
The directive dated 23 July reads: “It has become apparent that the economy has not been operating optimally and in the process relentlessly unleashing severe hardships on the citizenry. Thus from 2009, ratepayers have not been able to meet their obligations in terms of payment of taxes, rentals, levies and related charges resulting in an enormous and crippling debt burden frustrating the majority of the population.

“Given the above circumstances, all local authorities are in terms of Section 133 of the Rural District Councils Act (Chapter 29:13) as read with Section 303 of the Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29:15) directed to write off debts in respect of rentals, unit tax, development levies, licences and refuse charges owed by individual ratepayers as at 30 June 2013,” reads part of the directive.