Pay up or else
RATEPAYERS who are in arrears could have their properties put up for mortgage through a court order as a form of repayment.
Minister for Industry, Trade, Tourism, Local Government, Housing and Community Development Premila Kumar said this was one of the options they were looking into, with the other being a garnishee order.
“We are serious about this, we will not allow people to benefit or use the facilities and everything available and not pay your rate,” she said.
RATEPAYERS owe about $20 million to the Suva City Council which was the highest amount across all municipalities, said Industry, Trade, Tourism, Local Government, Housing and Community Development Minister Premila Kumar after meeting with Lami Town Council yesterday.
“We have established that about $1.8m is owed in rates, in business licences, in property rentals not paid and so forth,” Mrs Kumar said in a meeting of special administrators with Lami Town Council CEO and the management team.
“Even garbage collection, people are not paying their garbage rates and that’s a lot of money for a small town like Lami.”
She said they had to collect this money and the public was aware they were being given amnesty until December 31.
“If they pay a principal sum all the interest will be disregarded and will not be taken into consideration.
“So the waiver will be given on the interest rate,” she said.
Most of the challenges faced by the municipalities were similar in terms of not being able to collect the rates, garbage fees being in arrears, poor enforcement of laws, people selling from the footpaths and bus stops.
“They are making little stalls wherever they feel like so there is very poor enforcement and we want to tighten it up if we want to make our cities and towns look more presentable and to be fair to everybody else,” she said. “We have to enforce the laws to ensure we are doing things to pay the legislation.”
According to Ms Kumar to get back the money which was being owed they were looking at either taking a court order to put the properties on mortgage sale or a garnishee order. “At the moment what we are doing for each and every municipal council is rate profiling,” she said.
“We want to know who is this ratepayer who is not clearing the rates from which year they have been owing the rate, what is the principal amount and what is the interest rate whether they own a property which has got flats in it, is the matter under dispute just because there is a fight between the family members, is this case with the public trustee, what is the real reason.
“So that we can call in each and every ratepayer that owes money and we can reason out with them and initially we will be asking them to pay up even if they want to go into a payment system.
“We will allow that and if that doesn’t work we will definitely put the property up for mortgage sale through a court order and deal with them.”