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Midlands Correspondent
GOKWE Town Council and the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) are embroiled in a bitter tiff for the right to bill residents for water and sewer reticulation services.Under the existing arrangement the water authority is billing the residents and businesses directly.

However, the town council contends that they should take over the billing system just like the majority of urban local authorities in the country so that they can break even in as far as revenue collection is concerned.

Gokwe has an annual budget of $3,5 million but it is failing to meet the target due to a thin revenue collection base.

Loud Ramakgapola, the Gokwe town secretary said billing residents will widen council revenue gap and council will be able to meet some of its obligations which include paying its workers on time.

He said: “The challenge that we have is that we do not have control over water and sewer reticulation, which is the main service delivery item. Both services at the moment are under Zinwa and that to us has given us a negative in terms of revenue. We think if we can have control over water and sewer then we can break even.

“The advantage that we have as Gokwe is that the water here is from boreholes and it is not expensive to treat so it becomes easier
for us to provide quality service.”

However, Zinwa’s Sanyati catchment area manager, Engineer Chengeto Gozo said the local authority should first demonstrate that they have the capacity to bill residents before the authority can handover the service to council.

“We are yet to receive a formal request from them Gokwe Town Council but the bottom line is that they need to demonstrate that they have the capacity to handle such a delicate service delivery issue. They know the procedure to follow and need to satisfy certain requirements.

“We have had situations whereby we handover water and sewer reticulation to council but six months down the line service delivery completely collapses,” said Gozo.

He said council had initially applied to purchase bulk water from the water authority and bill residents but the request had been turned down since the local authority did not have the capacity.

Gokwe suburbs of Njelele, Mapfungautsi, Sesame 1 and 2, Greenvalley and the town centre receive piped water from the water authority.