Residents urged to verify outrageously high bills

Diana Nherera Suburban Reporter

Ward 16 Councillor Denford Ngadziore has urged residents in his ward to verify with the City of Harare if they receive outrageously high bills from the municipality.

Speaking at a Ward 16 residents meeting to discuss bills at Mabelreign Park, Cllr Ngadziore said if residents are billed figures as high as US$1 600, they should treat such bills as abnormal if they are domestic ratepayers.

He also urged residents to query high bills because there might be an error with their property evaluation.

“Suppose a resident is paying maybe around US$80 every month.  And as the resident said, her bill came and she’s owing RTGS $7 million. And if you multiply it with the interbank rate, it comes up to US$1 600.

“If you get such a domestic bill and your property is not used for industrial purposes, such cases are abnormal and there is an anomaly that needs to be verified.

“Notify Mr Victor Chifamba (City of Harare chief billing officer at Rowan Martin), Mr Mushandu (Ward 16 water superintendent) and others and they go on site to check on the anomaly,” he said.

Cllr Ngadziore said the bills scenario was similar to buying from a supermarket.

“It’s like you go into OK supermarket. Bread is $1,50 and when you get to the till, you are told it’s $7. Do you insist on paying the $7 or you refuse to pay?” he said.

Cllr Ngadziore said institutions such as the City of Harare and central Government are public institutions that provide services at affordable prices.

“We are not there for profit making,” said Cllr Ngadziore.

Bloomingdale residents also complained they were getting huge bills stating that they were using about 200 cubic metres of water when their bulk metre reads 100 cubic metres.

Cllr Ngadziore urged Mr Chifamba to advise him when council are sending meter readers to the entire ward so he can alert residents.

“Please do not send meter readers in Mabelreign only but also in Greencroft and other areas because they are all affected. Make sure they physically read the (water) meters and where you think there is an anomaly, it’s better to find a way of dealing with it internally before you send it to a resident instead of sending such a bill,” he said.

A resident of the ward complained about a development taking place using unaccountable water on a zone meter as their area does not have individual meters.

He said: “There is a development taking place. Now if they say after pumping water in Bloomingdale or Mabelreign, when they are using the water, are they not taking into account that the water used is not accountable water?”

In response, Mr Chifamba said council started a programme of installing zone water meters so that it can balance the amount of water pumped to a zone and what the city would have billed.

“Ashdown Park now has those meters, so it’s coming. We hope once the ERP has been upgraded, we can reconcile the payments, it will be sorted,” he said. Mr Chifamba gave an update on the meter installations in the ward.

“Our technical guys have already started moving around installing zone meters. So houses in Ashdown Park have a meter in Harare Drive that reads the amount pumped each month. So we have not been able to reconcile because of the ERP system.”

He urged residents to notify the meter readers of non-revenue water.

“We have quite a lot of thefts. Let us know if you see our meter readers.

“We have what we call non-revenue water, mvura isina mubhadhari (water not paid for),” said Mr Chifamba.

Cllr Ngadziore urged residents to report people consuming water for free.