Chipata Municipal Council says it faced financial challenges in 2015.

Chipata Municipal Council was faced with financial challenges in its operations in the year 2015.
Council Mayor, Jealous Phiri told Breeze that most people owning business places were not able to pay trading taxes last year.
Mr. Phiri added that property owners were also not up to date with payments of ground rate.
He says cleaning of roads and garbage collection was not frequently done because of failure by people to pay taxes, which are the major sources of income for the local authority.
Meanwhile, Mr. Phiri says the issue of monthly payment of Chief Retainers has been resolved.
He explained that one officer at the council who was in charge of salaries for Chief Retainers was keeping the cheques in the drawers instead of taking them to the Bank, adding that the Retainers will be given their owed allowances.
And Mr. Phiri says the issue of double receipting at the council is a thing of the past following the new electronic method of issuing receipts that the council has introduced.
He added that the local authority is up to date with the payment of salaries for Division One, Two and Three workers.
The mayor added that operations of the council last year was good as people managed to attend to various projects despite challenges faced by the local authority.