Lilongwe council admits five out of six properties are off the tax books

Lilongwe City Council is plotting a staggering K15.2 billion cash grab from property owners — after finally admitting its records have been hopelessly out of date for a jaw-dropping 15 years.

In an extraordinary admission, officials revealed the council has been collecting a paltry K3.1 billion a year in property rates — despite sitting on a potential goldmine worth nearly six times that amount.

The astonishing shortfall has been laid bare as the council scrambles to overhaul its ancient valuation roll, last updated all the way back in 2011 — despite the law demanding a refresh every five years.

Two scheduled reviews, due in 2016 and 2021, were quietly scrapped — with officials blaming a lack of cash to carry them out.

Now, in a statement issued on August 11, the council has finally come clean about the scale of the mess — revealing that a staggering 230,000 properties across the capital have effectively been invisible to tax collectors.

Chief Public Relations Officer Tamara Chafunya dropped the bombshell figures, admitting the current roll captures a mere 45,896 properties — against an estimated 276,000 actually standing in the city as of 2024.

“The current roll covers only 45,896 properties, against an estimated 276,000 properties that are actually on the ground as of 2024. That gap alone tells you why our revenue base has been so constrained,” she admitted.

And the numbers get even more eye-watering. Properties on the outdated roll are valued at just K428.6 billion — a fraction of the eye-popping K2.55 TRILLION they’d be worth if valuations actually reflected today’s prices.

The city has now launched its so-called Quinquennial Valuation Roll exercise — a mass property sweep running from this month through to March 2027, carried out alongside the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development.

Rather than squeezing existing ratepayers even harder, bosses insist the plan is to drag thousands of off-the-books properties into the tax net for the first time — branding it a fairer way to fill the city’s coffers.

“An accurate, comprehensive valuation roll gives us a much stronger foundation for planning, because we will finally be working with figures that reflect what is actually on the ground,” Chafunya insisted.

Ward-level town hall meetings are being rolled out across the city, roping in councillors, block leaders, development committees and faith groups to spread the word before the valuers move in.

But residents have been issued a stark warning: dodge the valuers or lie about your property, and you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law, with the council confirming penalties await anyone caught obstructing the process.

Officials say the shake-up will finally give the cash-strapped capital a fighting chance of properly funding infrastructure, waste collection and public health services — after years of limping along on a fraction of its true revenue potential.

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