The Suva City Council has set up a special taskforce to address the significant backlog of overdue rates that has amounted to more than $33million as of December 31, 2023.
Council special administrator chairperson Tevita Boseiwaqa said the SCC is highlighting the urgency of resolving this issue and outlined steps being taken by the council to mitigate the problem.
“That’s one of the major issues we need to address. The rates arrears are quite significant,” Mr Bosewaqa said.
“As a way forward, we have formed a special taskforce with diverse skills to map the way forward and see that it’s done.
“We started by engaging a group of youths and engaged them in a short-term basis to conduct the profiling of the rate payers.
“We have the data and are currently processing the data.”
Mr Boseiwaqa said data collected would be used to devise effective strategies.
“And once this special committee will make their evaluations, we will come up with strategies to effectively deal with these problems.
“We have discussed some of these strategies and will look into how we can effectively implement these strategies.
“It would be good to take a more constructive approach to this.
“We have to look at the bylaws and the normal ways of recovering them like awareness.”
Mr Boseiwaqa said the Council is outlining a multifaceted approach towards resolving this issue.
