The decisive action of the Tshwane metro to ruthlessly recoup on R6.6 billion rand of electricity losses had spectacular results with people coming in droves to pay their arrears.
Selby Bokaba, spokesperson for the municipality said the department of international relations and corporations (DIRCO) were one of the first to pay their arrears of R2.2 million.
“We have had a lot of people coming to our offices to pay their bills, others making arrangements to pay large outstanding amounts and others enquiring how much they owe. We even had people from our own offices making a serious effort to settle their accounts.”
“We are happy with the response. People now realise the seriousness of our actions. But it should not have come to this. You should not wait until you’re threatened that your power will be cut before paying your bills. People subscribe to Multi Choice or DSTV and they know if they don’t pay their bills they will automatically be disconnected. People honour their airtime contracts, so why not honour the debt they have with regard to electricity? When it comes to paying for services they seem to become indifferent,” Bokabe said.
He added that the municipality had a series of engagements with various government departments, entities, other municipalities, businesses and residential consumers weekly, monthly and quarterly through the Government Debt Forum to get them to settle their accounts.
“We have to date issued 182 623 green notices and 3 548 red notices across all sectors for accounts in arrears, reminding them of their debt and informing them the disconnection process will follow suit. We have increased our manpower by appointing 30 companies to execute disconnections and reconnections. We have also put our debt collectors on terms to fast-track legal actions. Further, we have issued 481 summonses to the top 1000 owing accounts.” he said.
Referring to the cut off of electricity at schools, which elicited a lot of criticism, he said that schools were not exempt of payment.
“Schools have not been exempted from payment. The payment of R21 million is currently being processed, according to the Gauteng Department of Education. They said they will make their payments on Tuesday and it will reflect in our accounts on Friday, so we are reconnecting them. We could however not connect all schools, because some of them have their meter boxes inside their premises and we did not have access to them over the weekend, therefore we will do the reconnections today,” he said.
He remarked the knock-on effect the lack of payment had on other tasks of the metro.
“Look at the construction all over the central business area which we are unable to complete due to a shortage of funds. We are unable to provide water, sanitation, electricity and housing because there is no money as a result of people who are not paying their electricity bills. How do you function if you have a deficit of R6.6 billion?”
Asked about the R700 million that the municipality wrote off recently in electricity arrears, he said that this came about because indigent people could not pay this and that there was no hope that these debts could be recovered.
He said the municipality started rolling out the installion of meters to small power users, which include residential houses. Previously the municipality focussed on high end users such as motor assembling plants in Rosslyn, factories and hospitals. This was temporarily stopped due to a court case which was brought in against the municipality.
“We are now going full out in the roll out of installing meters,” he said.
Daryll Moss, the Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson for finance said for years the DA called on the city council to implement its debt collection policy and cut electricity to properties that fall behind on municipal accounts.
“With the outstanding debt level now reaching R6 billion and a desperate situation regarding cash flow, the city administration has finally conceded that it has a disaster on hand and has started to implement its own policies. It is strange that these actions are taken at the same time the city is planning to sell its overdue debtor book to a factoring organization. It would be reasonable to consider factoring only after all other steps have been taken to collect outstanding debts,” he said.
He said for years the DA has been telling the city administration that its financial and cash flow management is not sustainable.
“With billions being written off every year on debts, cash to pay day-to-day expenses related to service delivery is not there and hence these desperate measures. We can only say thanks for finally listening, but why did it take so long?” he asked.
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