Mpumalanga: Govan Mbeki Municipality fails to honour payment agreement with Rand Water

The Govan Mbeki Municipality is still struggling to pay its debtors.

This resulted in Rand Water announcing last week that it will further reduce the water supply to the municipal area by another 20 per cent on Monday, 9 March, Ridge Times reports.

This is in addition to the 40 per cent water reduction that is currently being implemented in the area. The municipality has an overdue payment of R47 million due to Rand Water, as arranged with the municipality.

The total amount owed to Rand Water is R245 890 637, 58 (almost R246-million).

Mr Felani Mndebele, the municipal manager, said the municipality received the notice of throttling and that his team will be meeting the Rand Water team on Wednesday, 11 March.

He said the municipality will pay something while they continue to engage with Rand Water.

“We can assure the residents that the municipality will do everything in its power to ensure that services are provided to the best level.

“We hope that the meeting with Rand Water will yield positive results.

“However we are calling on residents to pay for their services.”

Mr Mndebele said the reason for this “unfavourable” financial position is the high electricity and water loss incurred due to theft.

According to him, this has led to the financial downfall of the municipality.

“However, plans are underway to rectify this situation which has a terrible effect on the entire operations of the municipality.

“We are also conducting various operations, which include dealing with ghost vending and illegal connections.

“We are implementing Operation Ruthula to deal with electricity theft through the bridging.”

He said the municipality made a shocking discovery that even big business and suburb-residents, also steal electricity.

Mr Mndebele said the municipality is also working on the Financial Recovery Plan as recommended by Cogta.

He said it will take some time to deal with the current financial state of the municipality because it began a long time ago.

He said the recovery plan has short, medium and long term recommendations which the municipality has begun implementing.

According to Mr Mndebele, the provincial government is monitoring the plan and they often give reports.

When asked about the Democratic Alliance’s motion about the disappearance of R3-million that was allocated to renovate the Johannes Stegmann Theatre in 2017, Mr Mndebele said: “We investigated this and discovered that the R3-million was never given to the municipality.

“The Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (MEGA) pledged that it will give the money to the municipality, but it was never received.

“We made a follow up to MEGA and they have invited us to a meeting.

“We hope they will honour their pledge.”