City breaks the law after increasing rates without approved budget

Suburban Reporter

The City of Harare has gone behind ratepayers and central Government’s back to clandestinely increase the property tax and service charges such as refuse collection and water despite the Ministry of Local Government rejecting the municipality’s budget proposals for 2024.

Deputy Mayor and Ward 7 Councillor Rose Muronda confirmed to residents on the Highlands Residents Association online platform this that the municipality had increased property tax while residents confirmed receiving bills with increased refuse collection and water charges.

“True to his (the revenue officer’s) word rates have gone up a little bit due to the introduction of a new updated Valuation Roll. Every local authority (council) is mandated to do a valuation of all properties in their areas of jurisdiction. This is giving land and properties a value in relation to the market although ours will be below market value. Thus the increase in property tax is in relation to that. If one feels they need more clarity they are free to contact or visit our valuation division at Rowan Martin,” Cllr Muronda, told Highlands residents.

Government rejected the City of Harare and Hwange Local Board 2024 budget proposals for failure to abide with guidelines meant to enhance service delivery outlined by President Mnangagwa last year.

In November, the President launched a blueprint — “A Call to Action, No Compromise to Service Delivery” — which sought to guide local authorities in drafting their budgets.

Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume admitted at a meeting last week to discuss the rejection of the city’s budget that the lack of an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system at council is a fertile ground for financial abuse by council workers.

“An ERP is the system that communicates with an organisation. That is where we are losing money through corruption from our employees as an organisation. We have a challenge,” he said.

Cllr Mafume said 15 council workers from the finance department are currency on suspension.

“The rest have cases at various stages at the courts because we don’t have a coherent ERP.

“And this created loopholes of residents’ money to be stolen,” he said.

Cllr Mafume said; “Secondly you cannot then charge adequately; you cannot set your billing at a proper level. You end up punishing those who pay. You continue to increase your rates. You cannot calculate. You punish those who are paying, you have a budget saying 30 percent will pay, so to cover everything we want (you make them pay more). So it covers faithful ratepayers because you are not following your money. Your bills are not coherent and so forth. So those who are faithful will continue to pay because it’s a very simple equation.”

He said Harare has more than half a million households that are supposed to be paying rates.

“We have 500 000 registered households which ought to pay rates. If we could get about $20 from 80 percent of those we would be able to run this council properly if we had a billing system that is credible because we would have a budget of $20 million.

“And our expenses, (producing) 400 megalitres (of water) and we can be able to pay our 10 000 employees, do expenses and other things to improve the city.

“But because we don’t have that system, we are not able to do the funding of the city properly. So that has created a problem.”

Cllr Mafume that the City of Harare has been told by the Auditor General to reinstate the ERP that is being used in Bulawayo and by Zinwa.

“We were told by the Parliamentary committee to reinstate and now we are being told by the Minister to reinstate.

“And full council told the staff to reinstate but they are thick-headed,” he said.

Cllr Mafume said they have gone for five years without an ERP.

“And if you don’t have an ERP, you cannot audit yourself. We have not been able to do our audits timeously. We are behind with our audits,” he said.

Cllr Mafume said the danger of not having audited accounts was failure to secure financing from lending institutions.

“There is no city run by cash only the world over,” he said.

Cllr Mafume said the other reason the budget was rejected was lack of corporate governance in the business units council runs under joint ventures with private investors.

“The reason why we created the business units is very simple; City Parking we own it 100 percent, Quarry, we own it 100 percent, Rufaro Marketing, we own it 100 percent.

“As an illustration, when we were enforcing one by-law using the city council, we would get US$20 000 a month.

“When we take it to these bodies, we get US$1 million as opposed to the US$20 000 that would mature to US$200 000 in 10 months.

“Because there would be cases of corruption, council employees are difficult to deal with and they will be stealing.

“That money (from business units) enables us to buy equipment.

“A lot of the yellow machinery, we have bought from our business unit City Parking.”

However, Cllr Mafume admitted that there is also no accountability on its estates and City Parking revenue.