By Precious Shumba
| I just love those Zim names... |
THE Harare City Council has adopted a $59.5 billion supplementary budget that officials yesterday said had forced the municipality to hike tariffs for services by between 100 and 600 percent with effect from 1 July. Falls Nhari, the chairman of the councilâs finance committee, said the Harare municipality had no choice but to pass on the cost of the supplementary budget to ratepayers because central government had not responded to a request to subsidise the budget. The Harare City Council submitted a request to the Local Government Ministry requesting central government to subsidise its supplementary budget because it was responsible for the economic conditions that had put the municipality in the position of having to come up with the supplementary budget.
| The response was "What economic conditions?" |
At the time it submitted its request, the city council pointed out that its original budget was drafted at a time the government had indicated that it had no plans to devalue the Zimbabwe dollar, which it however subsequently did.
| Somewhat... Just a little... |
The local currency was devalued from $55 against the American greenback to $824 in February, pushing up the Harare City Councilâs operating costs and forcing it to resort to a supplementary budget that it could not fund without significantly hiking rates. Nhari said: âThe governmentâs reluctance to give us borrowing powers has worsened our plight and our delivery of service has deteriorated.â Council officials announced that rates for low and high-density residential areas would increase from $530 to $1 430 a month with effect from 1 July. |