‘Financial constraints crippling LCC’

By NATION REPORTER THE Lusaka City Council (LCC) is failing to provide efficient and quality services because of mainly financial constraints, an aspiring candidate for mayoral elections under the PF party, Kumbukilani Phiri has observed.

Mr Phiri claimed in an interview with the Daily Nation yesterday that currently LCC only collected around 55% of revenue annually.

He said his priority once elected would be to tackle the uncollected garbage that people had always complained about in some compounds and the Central Business District (CBD).

“The council at the moment is only able to collect about 40% of daily generated garbage mainly due to lack of equipment and finances to pay franchise contractors. We will also speed up the implementation of the waste to energy project so that funds realized are quickly ploughed back into garbage collection.

“We have a lot of companies that can contribute in garbage collection like they came on board during the cholera epidemic. We have enough transport because private companies came on board and we can do it again until such a time that LCC has enough trucks,” Mr Phiri said.

He also suggested the need to give amnesty to all LCC clients owing the council in property rates and allow them to only pay a minimum fee of 10% of what they were owing.

“After that we can encourage them to pay on time because this will ensure that LCC captures more property owners hence more revenue for the council.

The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) has since set July 26 2018 as the date for the Lusaka Mayoral elections.

The elections would be held to vote for a replacement for Mr Wilson Kalumba who died last month.