Locals encouraged to pay for services rendered
Salga encouraged residents to pay for the services they received for local government to continue to effectively deliver them.
A government association has encouraged Mamelodi residents to pay for services they consume to secure effective service delivery in the future.
The SA Local Government Association (Salga) is visiting various areas as part of its national civic responsibility campaign, Asisho! Let’s say it.
The association launched the campaign at multiple sites in the nine provinces, including at Tshwane Regional Mall, in Mamelodi on Wednesday.
Association chief of operations Lance Joel said the campaign largely sought to bring together communities, municipal workers and political leaders around the table to discuss how to ensure municipalities became and remained financially sustainable.
He said Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke recently indicated that municipalities were owed R255-billion in unpaid bills.
“Municipality are not collecting what is due to them, they are not implementing the credit control policies that they have,” said Joel.
“The campaign is about raising awareness around the impact of community, business, the government not paying what is due to municipalities and how this affects the sustainability of municipalities.”
The campaign aimed at educating the community on how to pay for services rendered and contributed to the social and economic upliftment of the local areas.
He said the campaign flowed from the association’s 2022-2027 strategic plan to strengthen the role of local government in championing the social, economic, and material needs of communities.
He said the association aimed to inspire service delivery by enabling the local government to fulfil its developmental mandate whilst being an agile force of influence.
“Working with stakeholders, we aim to make the lives of citizens better,” he said adding that citizens needed to play their role by paying for services to enable local governments to effectively deliver.
An association executive member invited citizens to actively participate in the campaign.
Speaking to Record after the launch, Titus Mashaba of the Mamelodi concerned group, said he did not benefit a thing from the campaign launch.
He said a majority of Mamelodi homeowners were unemployed or elderly so could not afford the exorbitantly high rates the municipality levied and therefore wanted to pay a flat R40 for services.
“Yes, we understand it is important to pay for services but the majority of people survive on social grants and can’t even afford food,” said Mashaba.
“The people who can pay these high rates live in the suburbs.”
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