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Mkhululi Ncube, Chronicle Reporter
BULILIMA Rural District Council (RDC) will conduct a rates blitz that will shut down businesses in arrears this week as it is facing garnishee orders from statutory bodies over unpaid obligations amounting to about $10 million.

According to the latest full council minutes, the RDC “has a serious backlog on councillors” allowances and staff salaries with councillors owed about $3,76 million while employees are owed $6,6 million. The Matabeleland South  local authority recently parted ways with chief executive officer Mr John Brown Ncube. Councillors overwhelmingly voted to reject his request to have his contract renewed.

“It was noted that under his leadership as the CEO for Bulilima RDC, Council was sinking in debts where statutory obligations, employees’ salaries and councillor’s allowances (11 months arrears) have kept increasing at an alarming rate and this had legal implications,” read a report.

National Security Authority (Nssa)

Bulilima RDC chairperson Councillor Zoolake Nyathi confirmed that council was taking action to address the financial situation. He said the local authority had to settle part of its debt to the National Security Authority (Nssa) to avoid having council accounts garnished.

“We are having challenges with some of our creditors and we had to make payment plans with the Nssa after they threatened to garnish us. Zimra also is after us as we owe them and we are making plans to settle what we owe them.

We are trying to avoid being garnished because that will seriously affect our operations. Our rates collection are very poor as we are getting about seven-eight percent per month and we want to at least double that to enable us to honour our debts.

“Most of our cars are down but we are working on bringing some of them back on the road so that we are mobile to carry the exercise. Through our chiefs in the district, we have already started the collection but we will ramp up the pressure next week,” said Clr Nyathi.

He said the council has bought equipment to shut down businesspeople who are in arrears with the council and said once closed they will only open when they honour part of their obligations. He said the council has been analysing wards to see their performance in rate payments which will determine how they approach them.

“For people to pay is the responsibility of councillors to approach the ratepayers and discuss with them service delivery issues. Our council can offer services well when people pay rates. We must not only visit them when we want them to pass our budget,” he said.

Clr Nyathi said the local authority has two functional vehicles out of a fleet of about 13, which is crippling service delivery. He said the council will service two more while they have approached the company that won the tender for hunting to fix three more to bring seven cars on the road.

“The vehicle situation is bad but we are working hard to bring things to order. When there are meetings outside our area we spend days without a car on the ground which affects service delivery. We need more cars on the ground on service delivery issues so that each and every department has a car to carry out duties,” he said.

A source at the RDC said the council owed Nssa $400 000 and had to pay half the amount to avoid being garnished while it owes the pensions fund around $5 million and Zimra more than $3 million. The sources said some of the creditors have written demanding their dues, which was forcing council to act on rates collection. @themkhust