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Tawanda Mangoma in Chiredzi
The Chiredzi Town Council has challenged ratepayers to settle outstanding bills that have shot up to over $10 million.

Council wants ratepayers with huge bills to make payment plans as part of efforts to improve revenue inflows and avert total collapse of service delivery.

Besides battling to improve effective service delivery, the town has also been failing to pay salaries and wages for over a year due to lack of funds.

Town secretary Mr Charles Muchatukwa yesterday said the quality of service offered by the local authority continued to deteriorate because of the dip in revenue to sustain day-to-day operations.

“Obviously, the quality of our services has been compromised by the non-payment of essential services such as clean water, sewer and refuse collection,” he said.

“Our plans as a town, which targets to attain municipality status by the end of this year, requires that we make frantic efforts to engage residents, the business community and Government institutions so as to be on the same page on what we want to do as council.”

Mr Muchatukwa said his council owed employees salaries for up to 10 months.

“We continue to urge residents to come forward and draft payment plans with us so that we can cover the arrears gap while having revenue to pay our employees, collect garbage, provide safe drinking water among other services,” he said.

“We also have some residents, mainly in the light industrial area who have bills which they are contesting, we urge them to come forward so that we discuss the variance on a case to case bases.”

Chiredzi Residents and Ratepayers Association chair Mr Jonathan Muusha said council must incentivise residents to pay their bills by offering    discounts.

He said residents were not happy council has failed to appropriately use the little revenue to purchase a fire tender and an ambulance for the                           Polyclinic.

“We can no longer afford to rely on a privately-owned fire tender and council must purchase its own fire tender,” said Mr Muusha.

He said residents in areas which do not receive regular water supplies must be cushioned from council’s fixed billing system.