Plumtree Town Council has bemoaned the economic woes in the country saying it is struggling to provide quality services to residents.
This follows reports that the border town has spent 3days without water due to a lack of resources to fix several burst pipes.
In an interview with CITE, the Council chairperson, Councillor Fanisani Dube said Plumtree is not spared from the economic hardships currently occurring in the country.
“As Plumtree town, we are not spared from the economic hardships happening in the country, we struggle with revenue collection.
“We notice that as residents are being hit hard by inflation and economy, they no longer pay enough so our debtor book is very high,” said Cllr Dube.
He said the local authority can no longer afford to deliver proper service delivery.
“People are not paying efficiently to the council and this makes it hard for the authority to afford proper service delivery to residents, we are struggling when it comes to revenue collection.
“Because of failure to efficiently collect revenue we end up having problems in acquiring spare parts in areas to do with water, this then affects us when we experience faults,” said Cllr Dube.
“As I speak we do not have water for the past three days in Plumtree because we have various pipe bursts that happened and the local authority is struggling to get those pipes so that we can fix the faults to avail water to residents.”
He said the local authority does not have enough capital to pre-order critical spares.
“We do not have enough capital to procure enough spares and
keep them in our stores, so whenever there is a burst pipe we then start
running around and maybe go to Bulawayo to look for those spares, that is poor
service when we are looking at service delivery.
