Mangaung water restricted after city reneges on promises to pay debt

Bloem Water imposed restrictions on Monday to areas under the Mangaung municipality due to nonpayment of water bills. The decision comes after the municipality failed to honour several resolutions made to settle its outstanding accounts with Bloem Water.

"The two entities [Bloem Water and Mangaung municipality] had several discussions regarding the issue of nonpayment, and had been dealt with by the mediation process of the national Treasury," Bloem Water said on Monday.

"The mediation processes that took place on February 21 and July 4 ruled that the Mangaung metro municipality should pay the outstanding accounts. Unfortunately, that has not been happening."

According to Bloem Water, it had been resolved that Mangaung municipality settle its  outstanding debt and that interest on it would in turn be written off. But this did not happen.

"Even under the continuous nonpayment, Bloem Water has always been supplying full capacity of bulk water services to the metro," said Bloem Water. "This situation has put Bloem Water in an untenable situation which left it with no option but to reduce the bulk water supply."

Bloem Water said the continuous nonpayment for water had a huge negative operational expenditure impact on raw water purchases, the procurement of chemicals, payment to Eskom for electricity and employees’ benefits, among other things.