The Sunday News
Leonard Ncube
THE Victoria Falls Municipality has resolved to offer a 15 percent discount to a cross section of ratepayers as an incentive to encourage them to settle their debts.
This comes against the background of serious defaulting by ratepayers who owe the council close to $8 million in unpaid bills as they cite prevailing economic challenges.
Unlike other local authorities that offered reprieve only to commercial, industrial and institutional customers claiming residents benefited from a Government directive to cancel debts shortly before the 31 July 2013 harmonised elections, Victoria Falls Municipality has offered to discount residents who clear their debts.
In a statement, public relations and economic development officer, Mr Ngqabutho Moyo, said the new strategy will be effected next month.
He said the council was responsive to economic and global environmental changes hence the need to come with a rescue package for ratepayers who are equally struggling.
In a council meeting held on 24 September 2014, the Victoria Falls Municipality offered a 15 percent discount to all its ratepayers.
“This offer comes as a motivation strategy to help active account holders to update their bills for the last three months of the year of 2014,” Mr Moyo said.
The discount applies to any ratepayer who clears his or her debt and those who have no arrears will also benefit in a similar way as they will be rewarded when paying for the new bills.
“The finance committee advised that it was looking at this strategy as a means of increasing revenue in-flows so the local authority can as well clear all its outstanding arrears with different service providers and statutory obligations,” he said.
With this, the council expects to recover about $2 million of the outstanding debt between this month and December so that it is able to serve stakeholders who are hard-hit by economic challenges.
“An uptake of between 20 percent and 30 percent of the recoverable debt of $6 million is expected as the council anticipates to recover between $1.2 million and $1.8 million between October and December this year,” Mr Moyo said, adding that the finance department had collected only $4 million against a budgeted income of $5.3 million in the first half of the year where expenditure for the period was $3.6 million. This resulted in a small surplus of $378 708.
“If the current trend continues the council will have a mere surplus of $269 688 with a projected income of $7.8 million against the budgeted income of $10.6 million.”
The council owes its service providers $5 728 085 while it is owed $7 590 986 in the first half of the year.
“The municipality appeals to all ratepayers to honour their obligations so that the council can be a better service provider. We are taking after other local authorities as we want to maintain our town as a respectable service provider at the same time making it sustainable. We are quite aware this will have an impact on our budget and we want our ratepayers to be up to date as we close the year,” Mr Moyo said.
Most councils claim that they are failing to provide basic services as they are owed millions of dollars in unpaid bills by residents, Government departments, industry and commerce. Government and residents are the biggest debtors, councils allege.
In February this year, Bulawayo City Council offered 50 percent discount for corporates settling accounts by last month while Gweru offered to write off 50 percent of rates and service charges on all bills for industry, commerce and institutions outstanding as at 31 December last year to December this year.
