Municipal Reporter/Agencies
THE Harare City Council (HCC) says residents are owing US$70 million in a development which has left the local authority with very few options except to recover the debt.
The HCC Chamber Secretary,Warren Chiwawa said options are being weighed on how best to recover the debt.
“ We have always used litigation as a tool where we rely on our internal capacity as well as external lawyers as recovery strategies. Previously we also used to augment these strategies with debt collectors but we have since stopped such practices following concerns raised by our stakeholders,” he said.
According to the HCC Finance Committee’s records out of the total US$70 million, the major chunk is owed by the residents with other key stakeholders like the industry and the government and the dormitory towns being the least debtors.
“For now the government is not owing much since we have had lots of engagement .Since our budget was not approved we resolved to engage our debtors and this included the government .I can safely say those funds have managed to sustain us up to now,” said the Finance Committee.
The local authority has since set up teams that will be following up on the debts and if this fails options such as cutting off water supplies among others which respect the concerns of stakeholders will be explored.
HCC mayor Advocate Jacob Mafume in May 2024 threatened to post names of debtors on social media platforms and at all district offices in Harare.
