ZCC touts e-ticketing
Zomba City Council (ZCC) has recorded an increase in revenue collection in its markets as a result of e-ticketing with K106 million collected in 2017/18 financial year against K69 Million in the 2016/17 financial year representing a 53 percent increment.
Describing the system, which is part of the city’s reforms, as effective, Public Relations Officer Mercy Chaluma, said that the innovation has helped to bring accountability.
Chaluma said because of the success, the council intends to roll out the system to all its revenue streams such as city rates, business licenses as well as street parking.
According to Chaluma, different councils from all regions are approaching the council to learn about the system including the Local Government Accountability Programme, LGAP which is encouraging other councils to adopt the same.
Chaluma explained that the development will enable the council to improve on service delivery particularly on waste management and servicing of motor vehicles.
She further said as a council they are mandated to make a contribution of 25 percent to all the projects that are implemented in the city and enough revenue will make sure that they achieve that.
“In implementing the projects, there is also a need for council officers to do supervisions at all times so that they have high-quality projects. The Improved revenue collection also helps in this aspect.
“The improved revenue has also resulted in the council paying employees on time, which was a challenge previously. We believe a happy workforce results in good service delivery and so happy residents too,” she added.
On dealing with fraud, Chaluma said the machines are connected to the NITL system that is installed at the council for control.
She also hailed the ownership by the vendors in its markets a thing which she said has helped to make the system even more effective in ensuring that there is accountability on revenue collected from all its seven markets plus depots.
“To make the system even more effective, we intend to interface it with the IFMIS system that we use and so we are working with NITEL to make sure that this is possible. We started with a pilot phase where only three markets were involved, and we rolled out upon realizing that the system is successful,” she added.
The council procured 20 gadgets at K250 000 each. The other expense is the procurement of paper for the gadgets.
The reports come as some councils are struggling to collect enough revenue to run their services leading some vendors into boycotting paying market fees arguing they do not see the benefit.
