HARARE mayor Jacob Mafume says heads will roll over the delays in procuring the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system used for billing ratepayers.
Mafume accused some council officials of conniving with officials from the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Praz) to benefit from the chaotic billing system.
He made the remarks at an extraordinary full council meeting in the capital where he said they are going to confront Praz over the delays in acquiring the software.
“There is something which is fishy about our ERP. We believe there is a cartel between the council and Praz,” he said.
“They are conniving to stop having an ERP system and a functional billing system. We have not had an ERP for the past six years and heads are going to roll.”
In January last year, the Local Government ministry expressed concern over the municipality’s perennial failure to fix its billing system.
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Former Local Government minister July Moyo once urged municipalities to adopt the local authorities digital systems developed by the Harare Institute of Technology to bill ratepayers.
It emerged last year that some council officials had schemed a foreign jaunt to South Africa and China to earn foreign currency under the guise of visiting to study the ERP system
“We know and we understand that there are people within the council and Praz who are upset that we did not award a US$50 million tender to some company and they are determined to thwart the ERP system,” Mafume said.
“They are making residents suffer, bills are not coherent, money is being stolen, people are paying more than they should being paying.”
An ERP system is used by organisations to manage day to day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance and supply chain operations.
A complete ERP system also includes enterprise performance management, software that helps planning and budget.