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Ivan Zhakata

Herald Correspondent

HARARE residents have dragged the Harare City Council to court over failure to remit the 25 percent ward retention funds to all the city’s 46 wards .

On February, 23 2017, the local authority made a resolution to remit 25 percent of the revenue collected on each ward to be used for developmental initiatives for each ward but nothing has been disbursed to date.

The court intervention comes at a time when the local authority is failing to supply equipment needed to attend to sewer blockages, grass cutting and water bursts at local district offices.

The ward retention fund was meant to cater for locally identified developmental projects that will not be prioritised in the capital budgets for the respective local area. In the court application under case number HC2286, in which the Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) is the applicant and council the defendant, the Association is seeking a relief order for council to remit the 25 percent of the rates collected in all the 46 wards in Harare as per the local authority’s resolution made in 2017.

CHRA also seeks for the council’s acting finance director to open designated bank accounts with a duly registered commercial bank in Zimbabwe for each residential ward in Harare for the purpose of collection of rates payments from residents.

It also wants the City of Harare and the acting finance director to remit 25 percent of the rates collected in the 46 residential wards in Harare no later than the last day of each and every month that follows and to remit 25 percent of the rates collected prior to the date of the order within 30 days of service of the order on it.