Lovemore Meya Herald Correspondent
The Chitungwiza Municipality has announced that it will next month engage a debt collector following the failure by ratepayers to heed its call to make payment plans. The municipality wants to recover more than $60 million that it is owed in rates and bills by ratepayers. The local authority also wants to honour a Presidential decree, which gave it six months to pay all its creditors after its property was attach a few months ago.

Acting town clerk at the local authority, Mrs Charity Maunga told The Herald that it was high time that ratepayers should seriously consider settling their debts. “We are now engaging a debt collector. We are flighting an advert until December 12 and soon after that the debt collector will start working,” said Mrs Maunga.

“We are calling on interested debt collectors to come forward and tender for debt collection services because this is our last option. “After the closure of the tender we will be signing contracts with the company that would have won the tender. We have tried everything in our view by consulting the residents, associations, business organisations and churches.

“All stakeholders in Chitungwiza have been consulted several times, but never responded to our call. As you know, we are under the Presidential Powers temporarily measures where after six months we have to pay our debts. This is one of the strategies we are now imploring and we did not want to go this far, but we have no choice because our residents are not owning up.” Mrs Maunga said there was still room for negotiations.

“We are still calling on our residents to come to us with their payment plans and negotiate with us. About 4 000 residents out of 55 000 in Chitungwiza responded by end of August, all those with queries over our bills are free to approach our offices and they will be assisted,” she said.

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