The City of Harare (CoH) is failing to pay its workers on time for the first time in many years.
This emerged during a revenue collection, generation maximisation and cost containment brainstorming meeting held in Harare on Wednesday.
The meeting, which was attended by Town clerk Hosea Chisango and district officers in the capital, was meant to devise ways to improve revenue collection.
Speaking during the meeting, Chisango openly admitted that the Harare City Council is in a financial crisis. He said:
We are here because the City of Harare is in a financial crisis. For the first time in many years, we are failing to pay salaries on time.
l want to encourage all of you to communicate openly when we are brainstorming on how to improve revenue collection.
This will build a culture of trust and collaboration, which is essential for achieving our goals.
As district officers in your new enhanced roles as drivers of service delivery and revenue collection at the local level, it is important that you are customer-responsive, dedicated and self-driven, particularly in ensuring that the residents in your districts pay for the services rendered.
You must be self-driven in ensuring that customer complaints are addressed on time.
You will all agree with me that we have reached an all-time low in revenue collection because as a collective, we have not made reasonable efforts to collect what we are owed.
Harare is struggling to provide clean running water for residents as well as collect refuse consistently due to financial constraints.
The local authority requires millions every month to purify water from its heavily polluted water sources.
In July this year, the Harare City Council tried to switch to US dollar rates collection but the Government reversed the move.
Source Pindula News
