HARARE-(MaraviPost)-Residents across Harare are being forced to pay twice for basic services – once through official municipal bills to the City of Harare, and again out-of-pocket to private providers filling the gap left by failing council delivery, a new report has revealed.
The report titled “The Cost of Poor Service Delivery: How Harare Residents Are Paying Twice for Basic Services” was released on September 18, 2026, by the Harare Residents’ Trust (HRT), authored by Senior Programmes Manager Constance Shumba argues that what should be a single, affordable public service has become a double burden, pushing households to fund their own parallel infrastructure.
“A household may pay its municipal bill containing water, sewerage and refuse charges, but when the tap runs dry, the same household purchases water from a private vendor,” the report notes.
According to the HRT, families are now drilling and maintaining their own boreholes because municipal water is unreliable or deemed unsafe, paying private contractors to collect refuse, funding emergency sewer repairs, and hiring private security firms as street lighting collapses.
Many residents said they have lost trust in council water due to visible impurities and odour, even where prepaid meters have been installed.
A City-Wide Crisis, Unequally Felt
The report documents how the burden manifests differently across Harare’s suburbs, but affects all income groups.
In high-density suburbs such as Mbare, Highfield, Budiriro, Glen View and Mabvuku – home to residents with the least disposable income – the costs are heaviest relative to earnings.
Communal boreholes have become a lifeline, with households contributing to drilling, maintenance, and per-container fees. Frequent sewer bursts, linked to ageing and overburdened infrastructure, expose dense populations to cholera and typhoid, forcing residents to pay for emergency repairs that are legally the council’s responsibility.
In medium-density suburbs like Waterfalls, Queensdale, Hatfield and Mabelreign, borehole drilling at individual household level is now common. Refuse collection is intermittent, prompting community-organised clean-ups and private waste removal.
Residents also contract private security firms and neighbourhood watch committees to compensate for failed street lights and reduced police visibility.
Even affluent low-density suburbs such as Borrowdale, Highlands and Mount Pleasant – often perceived as well-serviced – show stark examples of privatised service delivery. The report found near-universal borehole ownership, routine payments to private security companies, and waste management outsourced to private firms, all on top of rates. In Borrowdale Brooke, residents pooled resources to commission their own private sewage treatment plant and maintain local roads.
The most extreme manifestation is in peri-urban areas like Epworth, Caledonia, Hopley and Whitecliffe, where many residents have never had reticulated water or sewer systems.
Private boreholes and pit latrines are not a supplement but the primary, self-funded infrastructure – a result, the report says, of government’s parallel development policy that allowed habitation before servicing.
Residents there also rely on costly, often unsafe private transport operators known as “Mushika-Shika” due to gravel roads that become impassable in the rainy season.
Levies Without Services
The report also raises concern over additional levies introduced by the City of Harare, including a water infrastructure development levy, public safety levy for street lights, and emergency services levy.
Residents questioned why they are charged for street lighting when some suburbs have gone six months without functioning lights.
“We now have six months without street lights, and yet they are collecting money from us. There is no communication from the council, even if you ask,” a senior citizen in Cranborne is quoted as saying.
Similar concerns were raised in Glaudina and Crowborough, where residents have funded electricity infrastructure – poles and transformers – that legally belongs to ZESA Holdings, only to be compensated with “insignificant electricity tokens.”
Transport was identified as a cross-cutting burden, worsened by the collapse of the ZUPCO public bus network, poor roads, and illegal touts who control parking in parts of the central business district and hike fares by weather and time of day.
Call for Accountability
The HRT says the double-payment trend effectively privatises public service delivery at residents’ expense and deepens inequality, with the poorest hit hardest.
It has called on the City of Harare to ring-fence revenue from water and sewerage tariffs, publish time-bound rehabilitation plans for burst infrastructure, restore predictable refuse collection schedules ward-by-ward, and establish a functional complaints hotline with tracked response times.
It also urged central government, through the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works, to expedite devolution funds earmarked for water and sanitation and strengthen oversight of municipal levies under the Minimum Service Delivery Standards Indicators.
“Poor service delivery in Harare is not merely an inconvenience. It is a hidden tax,” the report concludes. “Addressing this requires transparent, accountable governance where revenue collected is visibly reinvested in the services it was meant to fund.”
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