TCM’s vehicles to be sold on auction
The Thaba Chweu Local municipality has untill 9 October to pay its service provider or else an unconfirmed number of vehciles in its fleet, including the mayoral vehicle and a water tenker, will be sold on auction
LYDENBURG – Since Thaba Chweu can’t talk the talk, they will now have to walk the walk.
Reliable sources recently informed the Steelburger/Lydenburg News that the sheriff paid a visit to the municipality on Wednesday to take possession of several municipal vehicles relating to the outstanding Eco Maré Consortium account of R2,5 million.
This service provider stopped all operations at the landfill site earlier this year on account of non-payment.
According to Mr Robert Collin of Eco Maré the company has been trying to communicate with the municipality for an extended period of time. “They never keep their agreements regarding the payment of the account, thus we had no choice but to follow the legal route. What angers us is the fact that we have a three-year contract with TCM, but since we have stopped operations, they have now employed another service provider to manage the sites. If you still owe the first service provider more than R2,5 million, how can you willingly contract another without settling your account? Life is too expensive to write off debt. We are business people and without business, people lose their jobs,” Collin explained.
The newspaper was also reliably informed that all municipal vehicles have to be presented for auction on October 9, unless TCM could somehow scrape together the money to settle the account.
Cll Farhad Essack, who is also a member of the finance and technical committee, commented that these issues of not being able to be transparent and poor financial management proved further that TCM was bankrupt. “This was inevitable. This further proves that cadre deployment in vital positions has led to the downfall of this municipality.”
It is unsure how many vehicles will be up for auction, but sources indicated that more than 10, including the water tanker delivering water to extensions 8 and 9, Matamong, Badfontein, Shaga and Draaikraal, could face possible repossession.
After several phone calls to the municipality, none of the top management, including the former acting municipal manager, Mr Surprise Maebela, could be reached for comment regarding the situation.
