MUTARE City Council revenue collection is in a mess as
close to half of all the properties in the city are non-existent on the local
authority’s billing system.
This means that more than 20 000 families or companies are
either living or operating for free in the urban municipality for they have not
paid a cent for services and other deliverables.
The shocking figures were revealed by the Town Clerk Mr
Joshua Maligwa on Wednesday.
He said council was prejudiced millions of dollars over the
years. “The billing system is in a mess and we need to correct it with urgency.
These are loopholes that have been bleeding council financially over the
years,” he said.
“This shocking anomaly was exposed by our Geographical
Information System team which is working with the new ICT manager to capture
and update all properties into our database. In Mutare we have a total of 48
843 properties but after the GIS exercise 15 000 of these were there in our
database. From the 48 843 only 27 000 were captured in the billing system which
means that the remaining figure was not being billed.”
Mr Maligwa said of the 27 000 properties that were being
billed only 18 000 were being charged all the utilities council was providing
while the remaining 9 000 were not paying for some of the services in unclear
circumstances.
“Shockingly, there were about 7 000 properties with
negative figures on their accounts running into thousands of dollars which
meant that council owed them money. The impression here was that these clients
were paying their bills in advance. Paying for services they have not been
offered. You will be surprised to see that some of the properties that were not
being billed are located right in the Central Business District,” he said.
The town clerk said the local authority was collecting
around $2,3 million every month but the figure is expected to rise to about $3
million by July this year and to reach $5 million by year end as council moves
quickly to complete the GIS exercise.
“We have done Hobhouse and by end of May we would have
finished doing the CBD and industrial area,” he said. Manica Post
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