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Lilongwe city suspends five over revenue scam

  • Council staff issuing counterfeit market, parking fees receipts

Barely three weeks after a committee of councillors reported suspected fraud in revenue collection, the Lilongwe City Council (LCC) has confirmed the scam and suspended five of its revenue collectors.

Some vendors plying their trade outside Lilongwe Central Market: How much of the revenue collected from them goes to the council?
Some vendors plying their trade outside Lilongwe Central Market: How much of the revenue collected from them goes to the council?

The council’s director of commerce, trade and industry, Gensher M’bwabwa, said in an interview LCC is losing 40 percent of its revenue due to under-declaration of revenue collected by the revenue collectors.

During a meeting with chairpersons of various markets spread across the city on Tuesday, it transpired that the traders were reluctant to pay new market fees.

Two weeks ago, the council raised bench fees from K50 to K100, rented shops from K3 000 to K10 000 per month, barbershops from K20 000 to K40 000 monthly, Area 47 Market benches from K50 to K200 and Area 3 Market benches and restaurants from K100 to K400.

Besides the five, M’bwabwa said another revenue collector was earlier suspended for issuing photocopied car-parking tickets recently.

He said the issue of fake tickets in markets needs thorough investigations because the traders are not coming out with proper information to help investigations.

Said M’bwabwa: “I remember having suspended a revenue collector who was collecting money at the OBM car park. When I pressed him to disclose where he photocopied the tickets, he refused and we just suspended him.”

He said initial findings show that the revenue officers, in most cases, issue fake tickets or no receipt at all. He also blamed poor monitoring of the market revenue by inspectors as another contributing factor.

Without admitting existence of a syndicate which was systematically defrauding the council, M’bwabwa said the council needs to thoroughly monitor the revenue collectors to get to the bottom of the problem.

Said M’bwabwa: “The concerns that the traders have that sometimes money collected by revenue collectors is not remitted to the council are true. When we recently deployed a new team to collect revenue at the central market,  they got over K60 000 [in a day] and yet we were getting less than that previously.”

Asked why they did not report the issues to police, M’bwabwa said they wanted to give the collectors and inspectors time to change if indeed they were getting the money for themselves.

Chairperson of traders at Lilongwe Central Market, James Ali, said there is a lot that happens in markets to the extent that some people want to stop paying the market fees.

Lewis Kafaaiwala, vice-chairperson of Mchesi Market, said most of the times, revenue collectors get money from vendors without issuing receipts and this is affecting operations in the council.

In their findings, Lilongwe City councillors asked the council to produce records of daily market fees following investigations which revealed that 90 percent of revenue collected in markets ended up in people’s pockets.

Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito agreed that the system of revenue collectors defrauding councils is rampant and something needs to be done to check this malpractice.

He said Blantyre City Council is also not spared the fraud.

But Blantyre City Council public relations manager Anthony Kasunda said they are yet to be informed of the problem, if it exists.

Councils depend on revenue from markets, ground rates and other services to provide amenities to residents. n

 

 

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