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Midlands Bureau Chief
CITY of Gweru is seeking to charge rates and other services in United States dollars but with residents having an option to still settle debts using the local currency based on the prevailing bankrate.

United States dollars

This was revealed by City of Gweru finance director, Mr Livingston Churu.

Mr Churu was speaking during a talkshow which was hosted by a local c ommunity radio station yesterday.

He said the local authority was struggling with service delivery with its budget having been eroded by around 72 percent due to inflation.

“When the council set up its budget last year the rate was $1: 105 but the rate has since shot up leaving the council on its knees.

“What we are doing is what we call rebasing our rates.

What it only means is that we are going back to where the rate was when we crafted the budget then say if your bill was $5 it remains that figure in USD but when one then wants to settle the bills using the local currency, we then use the prevailing rate,” he said.

Mr Churu said as a way of cushioning the struggling residents, the council rate will be pegged on a monthly basis.

“We will be using interbank rate but you will agree with me that banks review rates on a weekly basis.

Ours will be different, we mantain a monthly rate so it means for a whole month we will be using the same rate,” he said.

Mr Churu said the cash strapped local authority avoided the option of a supplementary budget as it would take a longer route when it was already grounded.

He said they were strugling to pay services salaries and loans as the council was only collecting $279 million against a budget of $437 million.

“From what we have been collecting using our November 2021 budget, we are in over $2 million deficit which in essence means we were bankrupt.

“We were collecting $279 million from our billing but our bill per month stands at $437 million from the rough culculations I did today,” said Mr Churu,

“So after this rebasing our budget into USD we are not even breaking even because our rate is still very low we are only doing this to cushion us and scrap through the few months left before we craft another budget.”

“We are trying to avoid having a supplementary budget because it would have taken us a longer route when we were already on our knees,” he said.