Victoria Falls audits properties

Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
VICTORIA Falls Municipality is auditing its properties ahead of a delayed government valuation exercise which is meant to ascertain the justification by the local authority to increase rates by more than 500 percent this year. The council and businesses, particularly the tourism sector, clashed a few months ago over the increase, which ratepayers said would make living in the town expensive and scare away tourists.

A series of meetings by the two parties which ended in stalemates were held, resulting in the government sending a team of valuers in July to undertake a valuation of properties to ascertain whether or not the rates were reasonable.

The team is reportedly yet to start the exercise after the local authority embarked on an audit of its properties prior to the valuation.

The valuation exercise was supposed to be completed last month and findings presented this month. Victoria Falls Town Clerk Christopher Dube said they decided to delay the valuation as they sought to update their database of properties as a town.

“We really wanted to make sure we provided adequate information and we had to do a property survey before they could valuate. We did this together with the valuers and the findings will be sent to Harare,” said Dube.

He said some of council records needed reconciling as the database had not been updated.

“As you may be aware the valuation is meant to look at all properties and value them. After that a report will be publicised but we thought of doing a property survey first to make sure all properties are captured in the housing and billing module,” Dube said.

He said council got government backing on the rate hike.

But the “unilateral” rate hike by the local authority has seen three leading hotels in the resort town, Kingdom Hotel, The Victoria Falls Hotel and Elephant Hills Resort being dragged to court for allegedly failing to service their water and rates accounts.

The council took the three hospitality industry firms to court for allegedly failing to pay more than $380,000 in rates and water charges. Victoria Falls Municipality is demanding $166,457.51 from Elephant Hills and $125,676.32 from The Victoria Falls Hotel while the Kingdom Hotel has a cumulative debt of $91,762.63.

The municipality, in its summons filed through their lawyers Dube and Company Legal Practitioners, said the three hotels had continuously failed, refused or neglected to settle the outstanding amounts despite demand.

According to the court papers, Victoria Falls is demanding that the three hospitality firms pay the debts with prescribed interest calculated from the date the summons were issued to the date of full and final payment and cost of suit at attorney-client scale.

On the other hand, businesses in Victoria Falls, dominated by tour operators, hotels and lodges, have threatened to withdraw charity activities they do on behalf of the local authority as part of their corporate responsibility.

In May, the municipality rejected pressure from the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) to reduce rates that tourism operators in the resort town say are very high.

On Wednesday, the council started an awareness programme where it is appraising ratepayers about the budget formulation process, to make them understand how and when to object to proposals as well as know about the window period for lodging objections.