Suburban
Reports that the City of Harare is charging residents who are requesting hard copies of their bill statements are disturbing.
Due to the city’s chaotic billing, residents have not been receiving their bills and have to chase municipal officials to know what they owe the city.
A few years ago the municipality advised residents to send through their email addresses and mobile phone numbers so they could receive e-bills.
Some residents have been receiving their bills but others are not. There are also a number who used to receive the e-bills but no longer get them. This has forced residents to visit council offices to be told what they owe so that they can pay their bills.
It has been a back and forth scenario when it comes to billing and residents have also been complaining that the city is failing to capture the payments they make and keeps them perpetually in arrears yet they are making payments on a monthly basis.
Ward 17 residents in Mt Pleasant, Groombridge, Northwood, Vainona, Pomona and Borrowdale West have revealed that they are being made to pay between US$5 and US$10 to get printed statements of their bills. It boggles the mind why council should be demanding payment for bills. Honestly the municipality is bent on driving its stakeholders away. It is not the fault of the residents that the local authority is failing to send them bills on a monthly basis.
And when the residents make an effort to find out what they owe, they are told to pay up. Whoever comes up with such policies is doing a great disservice to the municipality which is currently battling dwindling revenues at a time it is failing to provide services to residents.
We commend the Ward 17 residents who refused to pay to be given printed copies of their bills.
Residents cannot be made to pay for their bills and after receiving the bills they are made to pay for services that they are not getting from the local authority. Council is presently struggling to provide water, collect refuse and maintain roads yet it continues to bill residents for non-delivered services.
Harare should just address this billing chaos for the city’s sake because the situation is not tenable. What also makes the payments for bills fishy is that once a resident refuses to pay council officials suddenly have the means to follow the ratepayers to their properties to hand deliver the bills.
In one incident a resident reported that the local authority had the temerity to slap them with a letter of final demand after they had refused to pay for a printed bill statement.
We wonder why the city cannot come up with a proper billing system but we are inclined to believe the argument by some residents that the municipality’s billing inefficiencies are deliberate and meant to “camouflage dubious transactions”. Residents also argue that council cannot give them proper bills and corresponding services lest the “gravy train comes to a screeching halt”.
