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City of Harare bows to residents' pressure
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
December 09, 2011

The Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) welcomes the step taken by the City of Harare in allowing residents to pay whatever amount of money they have in a bid to clear their outstanding debts. The majority of residents especially those from the high density suburbs owe City of Harare huge amounts of money which some residents feel were illegally billed on their accounts. Harare City Council has been since engaged in legal action against residents with outstanding amounts threatening to attach property for those who do not come forward to make a payment plan. The payment plan stipulated that an owing resident would have to make an initial payment of half the balance which meant that for those residents who owed council USD$1000, an amount of USD$500 would have to be paid initially, followed by USD$100 monthly installments for five months not withstanding paying the current bills for the period underway. Most residents were resisting settling these debts sighting erroneous and illegal billing and non provision of service which then epitomized the crisis in which our local authorities are in. The question is how can residents pay for a service that is not there? There are households that have not received water for ages yet their bill does not reflect this lack of service.

CHRA convened monthly consultative meetings in 36 wards of Harare bringing together stakeholders in service provision mainly from the City of Harare and ZESA. At this platform, residents interacted with the former conversing with them on the challenges that surrounded their action on nonpayment. Most residents put to light the fact that they were not paying because they felt that the amounts that were being demanded by council were astronomic, far beyond their monthly average income. In addition to that, Council demanded the controversial administrative fee of USD$20, which CHRA pronounced illegal because there was no basis for Council to demand such money when the 2011 budget allocated more than 70% of revenue to administration and salaries. In high density suburbs, residents were being charged USD$115 as illegal structure penalty; and city of Harare used outstanding bills on such frivolous penalties as the reason to disconnect water supplies to households in arrears. Residents were forced to pay a reconnection fee of USD$12; a situation that further irked residents. All these hazy charges played a contributory role to the current situation where some residents have now accumulated up to USD$5000 in debts. The new zone billing system, in its unclear agenda, has also contributed to this crisis. In short the system has seen someone operating in the Central Business District paying USD$1000 up from USD$100 per month regardless of the fact that operations and income have not improved. Surely, an increase of 1000% in rates in a USD economy over a period of one month is not justifiable and CHRA urges city of Harare to reconsider its decisions.

CHRA is of the view that, despite the poor administration system which includes erroneous billing and lack of a proper I.T support system in council, our local government system does not capacitate local authorities at both urban and rural district level. This situation has been made worse by the fact that the local governance framework in Zimbabwe is guided by Acts of Parliament, which are prone to political manipulation. Moreover, the legislative framework does not compel Central Government to fund Local Authorities; a situation that has seen the City of Harare struggling to maintain quality service delivery. The annual budget does not take into cognizance the need to fund local authorities because they are not in the constitution which means that for as long as local government is not captured in the constitution, residents will continue being the major funding agents in most council operations hence we reiterate the need to have the new constitution providing for the establishment of local government and its financing by treasury. In this respect CHRA has submitted to COPAC a detailed position paper advocating for devolution, decentralization and constitutionalization of local government. CHRA advocates for a national financing system that compels treasury to disburse 30% of the budget to local authorities.

CHRA urges City of Harare to urgently deal with the chaotic billing system so that residents can be billed correctly. This will also encourage residents to pay their bills in time.

Visit the CHRA fact sheet

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