THE City of Harare is losing millions of United States dollars in potential revenue in unpaid rates by tuckshop owners and residents owing to corruption and leakages in the licensing department.
This was revealed by council acting revenue collection manager Alfred Nguni while testifying before the commission of inquiry into Harare City Council operations since 2017.
“There is internal corruption and poor finance [management] within the city, where people connive with residents and allow leakages to exist within the system,” Nguni said.
“Indeed, the city has struggled to raise revenue, owing to a variety of factors, but most importantly is the issue that pertains to service delivery.
“Those are not the tuckshops in town, but these are the informal sector tuckshops. At some point in, I think it was in 2023 if not 2022, the city made a resolution to collect tuckshop fees from those tuckshops that we see in our residential areas.”
Nguni also said council was owed millions by ratepayers, whom he said were refusing to pay their bills citing poor service delivery.
“The city has not performed well in terms of provision of services to the residents and the reason why residents are refusing to pay is they are citing service delivery issues, to say, ‘give us the water and then we pay, collect refuse and then we pay’,” Nguni said.
“In terms of the payment conundrum or the exchange between the city and the residents, the city is saying ‘pay us so that we provide the service’”.
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A number of suburbs have no running water, while council is failing to collect refuse on time, among other service delivery challenges facing the capital.
Nguni said residents were also refusing to pay their bills fearing that their money would be misused by corrupt council management.
“Then the second one would be issues relating to negative publicity that the city receives,” Nguni said.
“A lot of corruption reports about the city, a lot of financial mismanagement issues about the city, which again affect the payment attitude of the ratepayers.
“I’m assuming if I were a ratepayer and I hear negative stories, I would worry about paying my (money) to the city.”
“Maybe the one other thing that I might need to highlight is the speculative behaviour by the ratepayers owing to volatility of the exchange rate.”
