The Msunduzi municipality, which incorporates Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, has raked in more than R26m in a campaign to crack down on defaulters.
This was the update given by the acting municipal manager, Nelisiwe Ngcobo, after visiting several businesses as part of operation Qoqa-ma Million which started on Friday. More than R5.5bn is owed to the municipality, of which R1.2bn is for electricity.
“We decided on this strategy because we have been lenient in terms of negotiations, more especially with government departments,” she said.
On Tuesday, the municipality visited the home affairs department, National Prosecuting Authority office and Natal museum, among others.
Ngcobo said they had been informed by the NPA via SMS that it had made a partial payment.
She said while the R600,000 owed by the home affairs office was not substantial, it had the potential of ballooning as the office had not been paying for electricity for an untraceable period.
At Scottsville Primary School, the principal undertook to pay 30% of its R1.2m debt.
The municipality also visited Royal Rice, a business owned by Yunus Kadodia who is also the owner of football club Maritzburg United. It emerged that the business had not been paying for water or electricity, citing a faulty meter.
Ngcobo said the municipality had met its end of the bargain, which including reconciling accounts and doing whatever was necessary to enable defaulters to pay.
“Some of them have been promising us for quite a few years and then have reneged. What you should also note is that the [debt] we are disconnecting for is not for this year alone but for previous years as well,” she said.
Some of the defaults can be traced as far back as 2017.
She said this affected councils' efforts to provide adequate services to its residents.
“We are being blamed for failure to provide services. We just cannot finance our infrastructure and our employees are also starting to voice their frustrations about the lack of tools of trade,” said Ngcobo.
She said the municipality also had a burden of paying Eskom and uMgeni Water as service providers.
She rejected suggestions that the municipality was being selective when disconnecting customers, saying it had targeted business and residential consumers.
The operation is planned for a month and she stressed that the municipality was not willing to accede to a request by some government departments to pay at the end of the month.
Ngcobo said the municipality had appointed four contractors who are auditing all the meters. While they contractors have forged ahead with auditing electricity meters, they had not yet started with water.
“We are giving defaulters five days to settle their bills. At the very least they must pay 30% of the bill. As I said, it's not just the current bill but arrears that have accumulated over the years,” said Ngcobo.
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