Abigail Mawonde Herald Correspondent
Harare City Council is scrapping off interests on legacy debts and is urging residents and other customers to approach its offices to have them settled.

This was said by acting town clerk Engineer Hosiah Chisango on Tuesday on the sidelines of the end of the fourth phase of the 100-day Rapid Results Initiative launched by council early this year.

“Council approved to scrap interest on legacy debts, so that is under implementation,” he said.

“We expect all our customers, all our residents to approach our offices to get those issues settled. As they pay their bills, they will be scrapping off the interests on the legacy debts,” said Eng Chisango.

He said council was also strengthening its bill verification system after some customers had raised queries.

“We also looked at the charges that are being contested, those raised for services that are not being provided,” he said.

“So we have our teams now to strengthen bill verification so that where we have to drop some of these unjustified charges, we will be doing so in our revenue offices.”

Eng Chisango said council was looking at ways of reducing costs.

“We are looking at basically issues of power consumption — it is going to be a main issue in terms of going forward where we are saying we want to see all of our properties that are going to be charged electricity to see that they are charged correctly in terms of the meters and also in terms of ownership of these properties,” he said.

“We feel we could be having some properties that we were leasing out with option to buy which some people have bought but some of the bills may still be in the City of Harare’s name.”

Eng Chisango gave an example of the Zesa bill.

“For instance the $2 million bill that has since been scrapped by ZESA that was on our bill but the property is not ours,” he said.

“So we will be doing a lot of verification on those issues but basically we are looking a strengthening the revenue issues so that we can plough more on our infrastructure.”

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