Defaulters dragged to court over K3bn unpaid rates

Lilongwe City Council (LCC) has asked the High Court of Malawi to help it collect K3 billion from city rate defaulters.

In July, LCC published names of defaulters in the gazette and local press, a requirement that needs to be fulfilled before the matter is taken to court.

Despite the council engaging creditors to help it to collect the outstanding rates hovering around K7 billion, the move yielded nothing.

LCC chief executive officer Charles Makanga said: “It is true we have applied to the High Court to help us recover billions of kwacha that are in the hands of defaulters.

“What we are now waiting for is just for the court to set up a date for the commencement of the case.”

He said the non-payment of city rates has forced the council not to give increment to its 1 870 employees and is also failing to collect refuse piling up in the city.

“We need to have 15 refuse collection vehicles, but so far we only have four. We are having difficulties to pay water and electricity bills and even bins in our markets are not enough.

“When we engaged the debt collectors, we thought we could have by now made huge progress but the residents are proving difficult,” he said.

A source at the council said some of the defaulters are those holding high positions in government as well as the private sector.

LCC mayor Desmond Bikoko disclosed that the council has embarked on various ways to raise money so that it can manage to meet its obligations.

Among others, the council has embarked on a street campaign that will see six companies awarded contracts to adopt a street.

“Each company will be remitting 30 percent of the revenue collected to the council and this money will help us to meet some of our obligations. We are optimistic that once the new by-laws have been approved by government, our revenue base will be broadened,” he said.

But Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito cautioned the council before disposing of property belonging to city rate defaulters.

“The councils should engage the public in discussions before they start whipping anybody to pay rates. In the first place, people were not paying rates because there were no councillors. The council is not forthcoming with proper information and service delivery is poor.

“If the councils were delivering quality service many people would have been compelled to pay,” he said.

Kapito also accused the councils of laxity and failure to enforce its own by-laws leading to residents not paying city rates.