Harare to employ aggressive debt recovery strategies 

Source: Harare to employ aggressive debt recovery strategies -Newsday Zimbabwe

Jacob Mafume, Harare Mayor

HARARE City Council (HCC) says it plans to employ aggressive debt recovery strategies to recover as much as $82,7 billion in outstanding payments from domestic and commercial consumers.

This was revealed by mayor Jacob Mafume in his 2022 end of year message.

“Our debtors are at $82,701 billion, and the list is as follows —domestic consumers are the biggest debtors, followed by industry, commerce and government,” Mafume said.

“All debtors must realise that there is a cost attached to doing business in an urban setting and as such must honour their obligations so that we can also provide basic services,” he said.

Mafume said poor revenue collection was affecting service delivery in the capital.

“Service delivery is a by-product of financial performance. To date we have collected $48,781 billion against a potential of $112 321 331 061. The variance is very huge, and it shows that we are not able to efficiently collect what we are billing. Our creditors stand at $9,092 billion largely driven by electricity costs and water treatment chemicals,” he said.

Mafume expressed optimism that revenue collection would improve in the coming year.

“Our 2023 revenue budget is $171,758 billion. This means we must collect efficiently to be able to fund service delivery operations. Our ERP [emergency response programme] must work and beginning January 2023 we expect the executive to have made strides in ensuring that our billing and receipt is up to scratch.

“We will employ aggressive debt recovery strategies so that we can channel more resources towards service delivery.”

Residents’ associations have accused city fathers of unbridled corruption and milking council coffers dry, awarding themselves hefty salaries and allowances instead of allocating more resources towards improving service delivery.