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Nyemudzai Kakore Herald Correspondent
Harare City Council revenue collection has improved by 100 percent after the city offered a 50 percent discount to ratepayers who settle their debts in full during a 90-day window.

The offer ends on October 23, 2018.

The discount comes as Government, businesses and residents owe the local authority over $784 million.

In an interview, the city’s acting finance director Mr Stanley Ndemera said council hopes that the initiative will rescue Harare from a financial crisis which has seen it failing to pay salaries and provide basic services such as refuse collection.

“The committee resolved that residents with paid up residential accounts be discounted 50 percent on current bills of such properties and residents whose accounts are in arrears be discounted 50 percent on every payment made towards clearing bills for such properties,” he said.

“Our inflows have improved from where they were before we embarked on this programme.

“On a normal day, we used to collect about $300 000, but now we are collecting about $600 000 on average. The graph is actually going up and we are really urging ratepayers to come forward and take advantage of this offer because council may never offer the discount again.

“Council sanctioned us to offer this discount after a resolution to this effect. Service delivery will improve if we manage to collect $400 million from what we are owed rather than continue saying we are owed about $800 million which we will never be able to recover.”

Mr Ndemera said when the city introduced a similar facility in 2016, it brought in about $85 million.