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Herald Reporter
Harare City Council will not increase charges for main line services such as water, property tax, health services and refuse fees in its 2018 budget. The budget is expected to be presented tomorrow. The city expects to raise the bulk of its money from increased water sales, ensuring that more people pay their property tax for domestic, industrial and commercial stands and buildings, and expanding refuse collection to areas not covered before. Harare Mayor Councillor Bernard Manyenyeni yesterday said most residents were struggling to pay bills with debts now around $700 million.

“We are going to present a standstill budget. The economy is failing so we have to consider the plight of residents. We will most likely fail to address persistent calls by our stakeholders to manage our manpower costs because of political interest. Two of the political parties in council are labour backed and because of conflicted nature of both councillors and management who are beneficiaries of our payroll directly or indirectly,” he said.

According to the new guidelines for local authorities, between 15 percent and 25 percent of the total budget should be reserved for capital projects. Government recently introduced the 30:70 employment cost to service delivery ratio. Local Government, Rural Development and National Housing Minister Saviour Kasukuwere rejected Harare’s $448 million budget for 2017, saying it was too high and unrealistic.

He then approved a revised budget of $328,2 million after the local authority trimmed it by more than $100 million. Minister Kasukuwere said even if council were to collect 100 percent of billed revenue and received all the loan funds budgeted for, the revenue budget should not exceed $271 million. Last month Bulawayo City Council unveiled a $152 million 2018 budget with no tariff increases in a bid to ease pressure on rate-payers. The proposed budget was a decrease from the 2017 budget, which was pegged at $153 million. Major local authorities are owed over $1 billion in unpaid bills by residents, Government, industry and commerce, a situation partly to blame for poor service delivery by most councils. Some local authorities are reportedly failing to collect refuse, provide other basic services and to pay salaries. Residents, commerce and industry are said to be the biggest culprits.