Disconnection campaign hits a snag as non-striking employees are ‘blocked’ and beaten

As the Tshwane metro has continued to face disruptions from the illegal week-long strike, services such as waste, electricity and water have been hit, leaving the metro unable to attend to its recent established disconnection campaign.

The disconnection campaign dubbed Tshwane Ya Tima has been on a sabbatical for almost two weeks, since the metro introduced it as a permanent solution to recoup owed funds from defaulting Tshwane businesses, embassies, residents and government departments and entities.

In the last week, non-striking employees fearing for their lives, have been escorted by police to carry out their jobs of restoring services to affected residents.

The striking workers have blocked non-striking employees from performing their duties and intimidating those that wish to carry on with their work, causing prolonged delays to the city’s ability to respond to some of the calls for services.

The Tshwane metro have recently revealed that its debtors’ book had been standing at concerning figures of over R17-billion, with R1.3-billion being owed by government departments and embassies, R4-billion owed by businesses within Tshwane and R8-billion by residential customers.

 The metro said since the campaign, the metro had managed to recoup R13-million owed by embassies earlier this month.

“We disconnected some, others paid and made arrangements. The amount now owed is R3-million. We are serious, you use our services you have to pay.”

Tshwane metro mayoral spokesperson Sipho Stuurman said the metro aimed to continue with the campaign, however “at this current time, we are facing difficulties due to illegal strike action”.

Stuurman said they were also aware that the metro could not optimally provide services sufficiently to all residents in Tshwane due to the action.

“We are currently focusing our energies on combating the illegal strike.”

He said the metro had since the beginning of the campaign recouped over R700-million.

Stuurman said the metro had also been fighting court battles through this campaign.

“As and when we are taken to court by defaulters, our legal team is there to defend our decisions.”

He said the metro had also won and lost a few court battles due to the campaign.

“Most of the court battles that were set on an urgent basis were due to administrative issues such as billings being wrong or a notice of disconnection not being served.”

Stuurman said however the metro’s drive was not unlawful and municipalities were allowed to disconnect defaulters.

“We plan to continue the campaign into the future as we need to reinstitute a culture of payment from our residents.”

He said through the campaign the metro had recently established an ‘affordability’ committee to look at applications of customers that were unable to furnish their municipal bills.

“This committee will assist clients to check applications of customers who fail to pay their municipal bills and look at whether arrangements cannot be created for acceptable amounts for them to pay, based on affordability.”

He said customers who were on debt review, under judgement or had a poor credit record were not eligible to visit the affordability committee.

ALSO READ: Parts of Centurion remain without power amid ongoing metro strike

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