The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
HWANGE Local Board (HLB) Town Secretary Mr Ndumiso Mdlalose says there is a need for councillors and council management to work hand in hand towards arresting non-payment of rates by residents and other stakeholders.
HLB is owed more than $100 million in unpaid rates as from last year and has implemented various strategies to recover the debt but not much has been realised. Mr Mdlalose said as much as council was making concerted efforts to ensure prompt payment of rates by property owners in its area of jurisdiction there was a need for councillors to also come to the party.
“For us to arrest the issue of non-payment of rates, we need a teamwork approach, which includes councillors and council management,” he said.
Mr Mdlalose said it was also the councillors’ mandate to ensure that residents paid their rates so as to facilitate developmental projects in their wards.
“Councillors have a duty to develop their wards and part of the resources for developing their wards comes from their Ward Development Fund, which is a (five percent) fraction of what is collected from rates payment. So, the more the councillors collect from their wards, the more revenue or resources are at their disposal to be ploughed back for projects of their choice.”
He said ratepayers ought to be enlightened about the repercussions of non-payment of rates to council as services are provided on a user pay principle.
He said the local authority was likely to be hamstrung by non-payment of rates culminating in its failure to meet its various obligations.
“Even if a few residents would have paid, it simply goes towards covering up where we will have borrowed leaving us with no money to provide services. We end up with situations like backlog in salaries, pension contributions and other statutory obligations. We will also have challenges with our current expenditure because we won’t be able to pay,” said Mr Mdlalose.
Mr Mdlalose said the local authority was failing to boost its capital equipment due to depleted coffers.
“In some instance we will be having one piece of equipment and none to fall back on because we will not have received enough money to build our capacity in those areas. So, we are not protected against shocks, shocks of breakdown of vehicles expose us quite a lot,” he said.
Debt exceeding 120 days per ward showed that Ward 1 owed $6,3 million, Ward 2 $4 million, Ward 3 $2,3 million, Ward 4 $1,4 million, Ward 5 $1,9 million, Ward 6 $2,3 million and Ward 7 $22 million.
Meanwhile, the HLB has partnered South Mining Private Limited in the construction of a state-of-the-art public library at an estimated cost of US$100 000 as part of its efforts to improve education standards in the district.
HLB chairman Councillor Nqobile Ocean Mabhena said construction of the public library was one of the local authority’s initiatives of creating strategic synergies with private players to ensure development in its area of jurisdiction.
“We entered into a Public-Private Partnership arrangement with South Mining for the construction of a library. Owing to the prevailing economic challenges being faced in the country, council is currently financial constrained to carry out some of the projects using its own resources. Thus, we have to resort to alternative models of funding to embark on some of the projects and one such way is venturing into partnerships with private players,” he said.
He said the library is expected to be a highly technologically modern facility.
Clr Mabhena said: “The library won’t be your traditional type of building filled with stacks of books and resources.
Apart from offering a wide range of books, it will consist of electronic resources such as computers and Wi-Fi, encouraging users to do more in terms of research. Over and above all we expect it to be a relational library where people meet and interact.”
