Harare mayor Jacob Mafume has said the government has stopped billing the Harare City Council under the Pomona waste-to-energy management deal.
Under the controversial Pomona deal, the local authority was obligated to pay at least US$22 000 per day to the Netherlands-based company Geogenix BV for waste dumped at the site.
The City of Harare was expected to pay more than US$344 million for the 30 years that the deal with Geogenix BV was supposed to run.
If the local authority cancelled the deal, it was going to pay Geogenix BV US$3.5 million for breach of contract.
But speaking to NewsDay on Monday, Mafume said the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development was now paying the bill. He said:
We no longer think about the Pomona waste management deal. Government has stopped billing us.
It is now Ncube’s headache and we don’t bother about it. I think they have surrendered it.
It has been finalised and it is now Ncube’s obligation after we indicated that we are not going to pay anything.
Even if they decide to bill us today, we will just forward the bill to the Ministry of Finance.
More: Pindula News