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Conrad Mupesa in Mhangura
Makonde Rural District Council is on collision course with Mhangura residents after it announced last Friday that it will bill residents of the mining town backdated to 2002, when the mine collapsed and the council took over. The residents are now facing huge service bills despite President Mugabe having slashed all service bills in 2013.

Makonde Rural District Council took over the social welfare of the now defunct former mining town of Mhangura in the early 2000s after the closure of the mine. Since then it has had a difficult relationship with a lot of residents who failed to pay service charges. Water and sewer services were later taken over by Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA). Residents vowed that they will not pay a dime to the council for services that were not delivered to them and promised to take the matter to court if council pursued with the case.

“We have never had a single day that council sent us a bill for service charges since 2002, why say we owe them now?” one elderly resident Mr Ray Zumani asked. Other residents say the MRDC was ill-informed and lacked knowledge as they said the Government had slashed all debts from 2013 backwards. MRDC Administrator Mr Lawrence Matulino professed ignorance over the matter and referred all questions to the treasury office which highlighted that the council had worked according to the Government’s directive by erasing all outstanding debts in 2013.