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Daniel Mhonda Mutare Correspondent
MUTARE City Council has unearthed a billing system scam involving the local authority’s top management where thousands of potential ratepayers have been removed from the database and are not paying rates and other services.

The scam, which was unearthed through the use of a new Information Communication Technologies (ICT) system, revealed that some accounts were deleted, never entered or their balances remained at zero over a number of years despite enjoying council’s services.

Town Clerk Mr Joshua Maligwa said they have compiled a list of ratepayers who have been enjoying the local authority’s services at zero cost, as they continue to fight corruption within the council.

Mr Maligwa said council lost millions of dollars in potential revenue through the scam, saying they will soon name and shame those involved while the law would also take its course.

He said this during a three-day service benchmark review meeting held at the Civic Centre in Mutare.

The meeting was attended by residents’ associations and other stakeholders.

“Through the ICTs we came up with a long list of customers who have not been paying rates to the council,” he said.

Mr Maligwa revealed that there were 5 860 people who have not been billed since 2009.

He said 1 160 customers have a negative balance on one or more billable items with 11 771 without refuse billing, 9 538 have no sewer billing while 9 098 also have no education billing.

A total of 6 927 have no water billing.

“Most of them do not have accounts because they were deleted. Wether it was by default, we do not know. Some of them have accounts with zeros,” he said.

Mr Maligwa also said there were customers whose accounts reflected some credits despite not having paid for their bills.

“There are senior management employees who have not been paying rates. As a manager I am obligated to pay rates, but we have some who have not been paying since 1980,” he said.

Mr Maligwa said this was mainly caused by lack of ICT experts working for council for a long time.

He said the scam has affected the quality of service delivery offered to ratepayers by council.

“We have realised that if we put our system in order we will be able to increase our revenue without even increasing rates.

“When we started using the ICT system our revenue collection per month since March has increased from $2 million per month to $2,5 million per month,” he said.

He said they were targeting $4,5 million per month.