Service delivery challenges plague city’s southern suburbs

HARARE’s southern suburbs are plagued by several challenges including a lack of water and sewer infrastructure, non-billing of thousands of households, low revenue collection, and ratepayers being made to pay for non-delivered services. 

Suburban Reporter

A meeting of the City of Harare’s Region 2 recently heard the problems facing the suburbs in the southern part of the city and the strategies the municipality is pursuing to address them.

Region 2 manager Engineer Norman Karidza told the meeting that the region that encompasses Hopley, Southlands, Stoneridge, Southview Park (also known as Fidelity Park), Southlea Park and Ushewokunze has a total of about 39 500 households but council was billing only 16 000 households.

He said not all of the suburbs are receiving services and in the few thousand households getting services, a large chunk of them are not paying for the services while council is billing and receiving payments for non-delivered services from a number of the households in the region.

Under its decentralisation programme, the City of Harare has divided its wards into five regions led by a manager supported by district officers and other council departments. The decentralisation strategy envisages a situation where a part of the money collected from the wards is channeled back into the regions to fund service delivery in those particular areas.

Eng Karidza said Region 2 was unique in the sense that development is lagging in the suburbs under the region.

“This is where people were settled before infrastructure was set up. So in terms of compliance, there are only three areas that are partially compliant which are Southview Park, Southlea and Southlands,” said Eng Karidza.

He said only about 2 030 households in Hopley and 5 600 households in Fidelity Park (Southview  Park) have water and sewer infrastructure at the moment.

The meeting also heard how the low revenue collection in suburbs under Region 2 mirrors the rest of the regions and suburbs in the city leaving the city to struggle to provide services and infrastructure for ratepayers.

Eng Karidza said only three suburbs Hopley, Southview Park and Southlands are being billed with revenue collection on the low side while in the rest of the suburbs the municipality is managing rates.

In Hopley, 1 500 households in Phase One are being billed and council is in the process of sending the general plans of the area for valuations to create accounts so that the municipality can bill the other outstanding 1 900 households.

“So by the end of the month we will be able to bill those 1 900. Those still to have (water) meters connected must have meters connected by the end of the month as well as we move towards billing those residents,” said Eng Karidza.

He said in January the region collected RTS$251 million in February this year, up from the RTGS$119 million it managed in January. In terms of foreign currency, the region collected US$6 300 in February compared to US$5 400 in January.

“So we have a lot of work to do in terms of revenue collection which supports infrastructure,” said Eng Karidza.

He said council officials were making follow-ups with residents encouraging them to pay their bills with residents of Southview Park (Fidelity Park) starting to come forward to settle their bills.

On the water supply situation in the region, Eng Karidza told the meeting that households receive water four days per week on an intermittent basis due to the work underway at the Mbudzi interchange.

Most of the water for the region is drawn from about 40 boreholes in the area, one of the reasons why some of the suburbs such as Hopley are sometimes the epicentres of cholera outbreaks in Harare. The developer of Fidelity Park (Southview Park) had finished putting up water tanks to facilitate the supply of water to households in the suburb but because of the Mbudzi interchange works, there are diversions for the water infrastructure that one of the interchange contractors will have to foot.

In the meantime, the City of Harare has asked residents of Fidelity to apply for water meters.

Eng Karidza said only residents of Fidelity Park Phase One are getting refuse collection services once every fortnight while Phase Two residents are being billed but the municipality is not yet started collecting refuse in the area.