In a bid to curb ever-increasing consumer debt, consideration is being given to getting smaller or rural municipalities to team up to share the service delivery load. The SA Local Government Association, representing 278 municipalities, is considering pushing for the establishment of a multi-jurisdiction municipal service district to which two or more municipalities would provide services.The proposal is made in a research document titled "Debt Owed to Municipalities, Poor Billing and Critical Success Factors to Billing".The document states that, for smaller and rural municipalities, the cost of recovering debt is prohibitive."These municipalities do not have the electricity and water function to use as inducement for the payment of bills, and legal steps to recover debt are too expensive. Therefore Salga should consider driving the establishment of a multi-jurisdictional service district."Municipalities are owed R105-billion for services.The director of the University of Western Cape's Dullah Omar Institute, Jaap de Visser, said: "The recommendation is worth pursuing. There is a robust legal framework for it in the Municipal Systems Act but it is underutilised."He cautioned against the merging of dysfunctional municipalities and the exclusion of other ideas."The financial viability of a municipality is closely related to its ability to collect debt even though, in rural areas, access to intergovernmental funding might be more important. So the argument is: Why go through this exercise, and the political fall-out of changing municipal boundaries, when you can achieve efficiency through arrangements between municipalities?"..