Suburban
THE City of Harare last week announced a ZWL$41,8 billion budget and expects to collect at least ZWL$37,04 billion of that amount from some of the services it is currently struggling to provide such as water, refuse collection and waste water.
Suburban Reporter
It is ironic that the municipality expects water, refuse collection and waste water to be among the top three streams of its revenue when the city is terribly incapacitated to deliver these services to residents even those who religiously pay their rates and service charges.
In its budget proposals presented by Finance Committee chairperson Councillor Tichaona Mhetu, the city projects waste water, refuse collection and water services to rake in between ZWL$1,3 billion and ZWL$11,3 billion.
Property tax at ZWL$14,03 billion is expected to generate more revenue than water services (ZWL$11,315 billion), refuse collection (ZWL$2,081 billion) and waste water (ZWL$1,318 billion) yet these three services rank among the worst offered by the city.
The other notable revenue streams running into billions include the city architect ZWL$2,393 billion and other at ZWL$1,615 billion.
Cllr Mhetu admitted in his presentation that Harare was purifying water way below the daily demand of more than 1000 megalitres per day while some of the treated water is not being billed.
“Water Sanitation and Hygiene is at the core of service delivery. In the area of water production, the City is currently producing an average of 375 megalitres per day against a demand of over 1000 megalitres per day. Unfortunately, not all the water produced is billed as a substantial percentage is lost through water bursts and metering issues thus non- revenue water currently at 62 percent. This scenario means that city is only accounting for 48 percent of what it produces. The proposed budget will reduce non-revenue water through a number of interventions namely pipe replacement, water metering and accurate billing,” said Cllr Mhetu.
Harare also hopes to make ZWL$963, 24 million from housing and estates although the city has been on record saying it does not have database of the people leasing its properties both residential and commercial.
At a council meeting last year, suspended mayor Councillor Jacob Mafume revealed that the City of Harare did not have an inventory of who is leasing council properties and the revenue being generated from rentals.
He expressed the concern following reports he received that the City of Harare owned two of the apartments at a Belvedere block of flats, which was gutted by fire.
The entire block used to belong to council but the rest of the apartments have since been sold leaving two in the ownership of the municipality.
“Are they (the two) with council workers in them or are they with people that have since left council?
“We need to have a dashboard and an accurate record of who is leasing our properties and who is in them, it would help.
“Can the relevant committee have a proper schedule that states the properties being leased, being sub-let and the revenues they are bringing,” he said at a council at the 1899th Ordinary Council meeting held in November last year.
Last month, council announced that it was carrying out an audit of occupancy of its residential and commercial properties nearly a year after concerns were raised over the matter.
In the same statement last month, the municipality also seemed to suggest it does not have a database of all the billboard advertisers in the city from whom it is expecting ZWL$365,565 million in 2022. Council said it had opened a window for advertisers to regularise their billboards.
“Billboards a key potential revenue stream, has not been optimally explored, going forward a proper audit should be undertaken and automation of billboard management must to be done to promote efficiency and transparency. This should be a key priority in terms of budget execution and its performance should have a tracked dashboard to assess traction. Furthermore, contracts with companies should be water tight to avoid monetary loss in instances of severing ties,” Cllr Mhetu said when presenting the budget.
Refuse collection is at its worst point ever in Harare with piles of garbage now a common sight at households, business premises and open spaces.
Recently, a council official revealed the city has only six refuse trucks on the road forcing it to abandon the scheduled collection timetable in favour of what it calls refuse collection blitz where it deploys all the six in one ward to collect refuse. This means some wards go for between two to five weeks without refuse collection.
In the budget, council proposes to buy 10 new refuse collection trucks but the lack of accountability, which has seen the municipality paying suppliers and failing to receive all paid for refuse compactors in the past, does not instil confidence in the ratepayers.
From the informal sector, another chaotic sector in the capital city, Harare hopes to make ZWL$385,099 million. If the informal sector was properly organised council could probably be generating more given the swelling numbers of informal traders as people turn to the informal sector to make livelihoods.
The municipality is projecting to make ZWL$40.782 million from social amenities even though some of its facilities such as soccer stadiums and community halls are falling apart from lack of maintenance and upgrades. Soccer stadiums such as Rufaro and Gwanzura are not able to host soccer matches at the moment because they do not meet the set standards.
Some swimming pools notably in Waterfalls are not working while the few that are working such as Mt Pleasant, Les Brown, McDonald and Greendale have benefitted from the benevolence of sporting associations and residents who worked hard to revive or repair the facilities.
In 2019, the City of Harare had to cancel leases for nine sports clubs in the northern suburbs which owed the municipality more than half a million dollars in rent arrears and have been subletting their premises to third parties.
The municipality published the names of the sports clubs as it started naming and shaming debtors owing it huge amounts of money, which are partly to blame for the council’s financial woes and the failure to provide service delivery.
Harare also expects to make ZWL$144 million from city parking.
