Hwange sues residents over $100m debts

BY NOTHANDO DUBE

The Hwange Local Board is taking legal action against ratepayers to recover over $100 million in outstanding bills arguing that efforts to persuade defaulters to pay up are hitting a brick wall.

Ndumiso Mdlalose, the town secretary, said legal action was the last resort for the local authority in Matabeleland North after various strategies to persuade residents to pay their outstanding bills failed.

“We have rate defaulters that have gone beyond 120 days, and we have issued them with final demand letters, and from our computation we are owed more than $ 100 million in non-paid rates,” Mdlalose said.

“We exhausted all other means to try and convince the defaulters to pay.

“We were then left with one option, taking the legal route because the challenge we have is that people are reluctant to pay.”

Council said $14 million of the debt accrued over the past three months.

At the beginning of the year the local authority embarked on various strategies to recover the money, which door to door debt collection and sensitisation programmes by councillors.

Mdlalose said the strategies failed to yield results, hence the decision to opt for litigation.

“If we had that $100 million, we would have done a number of projects which would have seen us meeting most of our obligations,” he said.

Empumalanga Phase I, Mpumalanga’s DRC section and Baobab’s T-Section are the

suburbs with the highest number of defaulters, the local authority said.

Fidelis Chima, Greater Whange Residents Trust coordinator, criticised the decision to take legal action against residents saying it was too harsh.

“The Greater Whange Residents Trust is very much worried about the move taken by the Hwange Local Board to take ratepayers to court at a time when the local authority is struggling to service stands at Phase Four, Baobab extension and Empumalanga West,” Chima said.

“Most of the residents that are likely to be affected are pensioners and low-income earners and the Hwange Local Board should come up with payment plans and continuously engage residents on service delivery issues. “

Most of Hwange’s residents were employees of the Hwange Colliery Company, which has been struggling to pay its workers and those that it laid off over the years.