The City of Bulawayo is owed ZWL$29.1 billion by residents in unpaid bills.
The local authority says it will read all functional water meters and bill residents based on actual consumption to eliminate high bills caused by previous estimates.
According to a recent council report the local authority billed $52,5 billion for rates and fees last year and only collected $20.7 billion. Financial director, Kimpton Ndimande, said in a report:
Council had billed $52.5 billion for rates and fees in the year 2022 and collected $20.7 billion. The average collection efficiency on billed accounts was 39 percent. The balance of debtors as at 19 January 2023 stood at $29.1 billion.
… Revenue collection was key in ensuring the availability of necessary funding for the procurement of resources for efficient service provision.
Amongst the factors that contributed to the low collection efficiency in the year 2022 were the increase in tariffs in January 2022 and the subsequent rebasing of tariffs.
Manpower challenges also had a negative impact on revenue collection.
Ndimande said the Bulawayo City Council seeks to improve revenue collection and reduce the number of debtors. He said:
We have a target to restore customer confidence in the bills by reading all functional meters for four consecutive months and billing based on actual consumption to eliminate high bills caused by previous estimates.
In conjunction with Engineering Services Department, we target to replace malfunctioning bulk meters on an ongoing basis, reduce customer turnaround time to two minutes for card-paying customers across all service centres and separate bulk cash payments from express cash payments.
We also target to decongest revenue halls through improving the integration of online payment modes, e-bills accessibility and customer confidence in them.
The City of Bulawayo is also set to follow up on defaulting customers and enforce payment within 90 days.