Tshwane municipality makes no payments to Eskom for three months

Tshwane appears to be a financially crumbling metro after revealing that it made no payments to Eskom for three consecutive invoices.

Tshwane has been circling in R4-billion debt to Eskom for energy supplied to it which spokesperson Selby Bokaba confirmed.

In September 2023, the metro received an invoice of more than R1.1-billion, more than R1-billion in October, more than R1-billion in November and R980 497 in December during which time it only paid R400-million.

“The amount owing to Eskom as of January 31, is almost R4-billion.”

Bokaba said the payment was made despite the metro collecting 90% of its revenue target in the past three months.

“Our collection level should be 95%. In essence, we only missed our collection target by 5%.”

He said Tshwane would however continue, with its relaunched Tshwane Ya Tima campaign, to disconnect defaulting customers.

“This is to ensure that customers pay for their consumption of both water and electricity.”

MMC for Finance Jacqui Uys relaunched the campaign after it reached an impasse in 2023.

Uys said however the project was relaunched and was adamant it would yield more than R50-million.

“We disconnected 70 households on the first day of operation.

“The Tshwane Ya Tima revenue-collection campaign, which seeks to disconnect services to defaulting clients who run up high service bills and fail to pay the metro, is back in full swing.”

She said the targets were all non-paying customers, including businesses, individual households and residential estates.

“On February 5, Tshwane issued 188 disconnection job cards, mostly for residential households, worth about R50-million that is owed to the City. From this list, 70 accounts were immediately and successfully disconnected in various areas.

Along with the disconnections, the metro imposes steep fines for meter tampering and illegal connections.”

Uys said this was the start of the campaign and promised to go after about “1 500 high-end defaulting consumers who owe the metro billions of rands”.

“As we intensify our revenue-collection campaign, I wish to appeal to residential estate managers to allow meter readers to do their job and not block access. It is important that we work together but, if necessary, we will use law enforcement.”

Uys said Tshwane needed to collect revenue to deliver services and honour commitments to creditors such as Eskom and Rand Water.

During a recent council sitting, mayor Cilliers Brink said the debtor’s book was sitting at R23.3-billion.

Tshwane implored residents to pay their bills because many had not been paying for water, property rates and waste management. This does “not only hamper improvement to essential services but creates an unfair burden on customers who diligently settled their bills each month”.

Eskom earlier broke the news that R3-billion of the R4-billion it had invoiced Tshwane was overdue.

Power utility spokesperson Amanda Qithi however, acknowledged that the municipality had changed tack from delaying payments to honouring the payment plan agreed to by both parties.

Qithi said: “Tshwane’s total debt is R4-billion, of which R3-billion is overdue.

“The city has also submitted a payment proposal which it is honouring.”

She said Eskom was doing everything in its power to recoup what the Capital City owed after it had filed legal proceedings against the metro.

“The matter is still in litigation. Eskom engages with the municipality and exhausts all avenues to try and recover what is due to it. However, in certain instances, the utility is forced to escalate the overdue debt to the National Treasury.”

For years, Eskom has not been pleased with the Capital City’s failure to honour its debt.

“The payment patterns by Tshwane have deteriorated to concerning levels that further threaten Eskom’s liquidity, financial performance and sustainability,” said Eskom, adding that the erratic payments dated back to 2022.

“Despite all the avenues that Eskom has explored to recover what is due to the organisation, they failed to fully honour their payments and to comply with their electricity supply agreements.”

Tshwane is however not the only municipality in debt, as by September 2023 a wide array of municipalities owed Eskom a combined R70-billion.

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