Acting Harare Town Clerk Josephine Ncube has urged the government to educate people that water is not a free commodity. She bemoaned the fact that some residents do not see the need to pay their water bills. Speaking at a World Bank sponsored workshop titled Service Level Benchmarking (SLB) in Mutare, Ncube said:
We have politics of the water. There is no push from the central government to ensure that people see water as commercial commodity. Most people still think water from the council is for free. They don’t want to pay,
Another impediment on the management of water by councils is legal field where there is a lot of interpretation and misinterpretation on what the constitution says about water. On the other hand the court is saying provide people with water.
Just before 2013, then Minister of Local Government Dr Ignatius Chombo ordered all local authorities to cancel all outstanding bills for residential properties.
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