The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
THE Hwange Local Board (HLB) is working on coming up with a comprehensive inventory to enable it to effectively bill all property owners in its area of jurisdiction.
According to the local authority’s latest monthly newsletter, HLB town secretary Mr Ndumiso Mdlalose said the local authority was working on ensuring that all individuals and corporates allocated land for infrastructural development within its locality are billed.
“Every portion of land within council, be it a commercial, industrial and residential stand must pay us something. At the moment we are collecting from a very small fraction of what we call council land,” said Mr Mdlalose.
He also noted that the local authority was working on coming up with a database of all properties and undeveloped stands within its area.
“We intend to come up with an exercise that will create a database showing how much of council’s land has been allocated and what we are getting from it. Where we are not getting anything we must make sure we come up with an initiative to make sure we get something.”
Mr Mdlalose also highlighted that individuals and corporates who have not developed their stands beyond the stipulated period will be subjected to paying rates.
“We need to use the policies, which we put in place in which development conditions state that developers are given time frames to develop, after which they would be charged as though they had developed,” added Mr Mdlalose.
HLB town planner Mr Themba Sibanda said the local authority might have lost large sums in revenue over the years due to unpaid rates by numerous property owners that are not captured in its inventory.
“Council does not have a comprehensive register of all properties within its jurisdiction, meaning some properties have never been billed since their inception, hence council is losing out on revenue,” said Mr Sibanda.
He also noted that for effective and efficient billing of council clients, the local authority needed to have in place an accurate and up to date property register for all individual and corporate organisation properties.
“This register is the basis for council budget as it gives guide on how revenue would be derived from these properties and how much to channel to service provision towards the same properties.”
He said the property inventory exercise has already uncovered a number of irregularities. He also noted that the exercise will make sure that all stand owners are known and contactable as some stands might be due for repossession and re-allocation.
HLB oversees administration in three suburbs namely Empumalanga, Chibondo and Baobab. The urban Councils Act Chapter 29:15 section 1 empowers local authorities to collect revenue for services rendered to residents in areas of their jurisdiction.
