Patrick Chitumba Midlands Bureau
Cash-strapped Gweru City Council (GCC) has missed its revenue collection target by over $2 million from January to July this year. The local authority has collected over $11 million from the projected $13 million over the period.

GCC staff does not have adequate protective clothing due to financial challenges. According to GCC financial performance report from January to July, the local authority continues to face challenges characterised by continuous increase in debtors, resulting in inability to carry out the planned activities in the budget and to pay suppliers.

“Our objective is to collect $23 000 000 by December 31 2017 and this translates to $13 416 667 for the seven months to July 2017,” reads the report. “Actual collections as at July 31 were $11 250 111, giving an adverse variance of $2 166 556.

“Hence, concerted efforts are required to collect the shortfall in the remaining months of the year. The revenue collection target is also depressed due to the fact that there are certain lines that were expected to contribute to council coffers, but the revenue line are stalled due to pending legal hurdles ($98,705), Zesa ($23,000,000).

“Council is in four months salary arrears and the staff does not have adequate protective clothing due to financial challenges.”

Council debtors have increased, the report says, from about $47 million to $55 million.

“Council continues to face financial challenges characterised by continuous increase in debtors from $47,992,797 to $55,678, 533,” reads the report. “This is an increase of $7,715,736. This has resulted in our creditors reaching unprecedented levels of $40,882,002.

“We have introduced the SMS platform to send out bills as we try to move away from printing physical statements, but our major challenge is to get mobile numbers from our clients, so far we have only managed to collect 700 cellphone numbers out of 25 000 clients.”

The report states that constrained revenue inflows crowded out service delivery, as most of the revenue collected was channelled towards fixed costs, the major one being employee costs.

Council manpower costs account for 63,31percent of total expenditure.

“There is need to bring the ratio to be within the recommended 30:70 ratio,” reads the report. “Sundry payments used 30.81percent of the collections, of which the major items were electricity $499,160, water and sewer repairs$232,532, vehicle repairs $181,505, pensions $122,336, travel and subsistence $119,734, purchase of pick-up trucks $100,380, legal fees $98,705, telephone $84,965, bank charges $54,155, conferences $56,320, councillors allowances $51,340, insurance $32, 468.”

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