Centurion residents slam overtime cuts amid service delivery delays

Residents and ward councillors in Centurion have voiced their growing frustration over alleged service delivery decay in the area.

This follows the Tshwane metro changes to its overtime policy, which it insists will not compromise essential services.

The councillors say service delivery has significantly deteriorated due to overtime cuts.

Ward 69 Councillor Cindy Billson described the situation as frustrating and said residents are suffering the consequences.

She recalled an incident where a resident reported a leaking pipe spilling water down the street on Tuesday, but the metro was unable to respond promptly.

“The metro workers have not attended this, and they won’t any time soon,” said Billson.

“Tomorrow [May 1] is a public holiday, so they won’t be working, and on Friday they’ll say they are attending to other backlogs.”

She added that these delays lead to unnecessary water waste, which could be avoided with just an hour or two of extra work.

“It feels like the tools we can use to solve problems are being taken away from us,” she said.

Billson also expressed frustration at being unable to fully assist residents due to issues beyond her control.

Ward 64 Councillor Alta de Kock said 21 sewage leaks were reported in her ward in The Reeds last weekend, but nobody was available to attend to the complaints due to the budget cuts and overtime restrictions.

“The leaks were unaddressed for about six days, and now, out of the 21 leaks, only about half have been fixed,” she said.

While she acknowledged that workers had been deployed to attend to some of the leaks by Tuesday, she argued that it is unfair for ratepayers to wait that long.

“Sometimes when I report incidents, we don’t receive any feedback, no notification that teams can’t come or are off,” said De Kock.

She said The Reeds is among the highest water users, but not because of population size, rather due to the number of unresolved leaks.

“It makes it seem like councillors aren’t doing their jobs, but that’s not the case,” she added.

Ward 67 Councillor David Farquharson also weighed in, saying that the overtime cuts have significantly slowed down the resolution of service delivery complaints.

“Our main problem in the area is water leaks because this is a dolomite area,” he said.

Farquharson said some of the leaks reported on April 18 had not been resolved.

He said since Easter, there had been a slight improvement in the sewage leak backlog, but the metro response was still not good enough.

The Reeds resident Albert Coetzee said: “We’ve had multiple leaks in the area for more than five days.

Every day we report them, and every day nothing happens. Meanwhile, we’re paying for water that literally flows into the street. It’s beyond frustrating.”

Coetzee said he empathises with the councillors but believes the city needs to rethink how it handles basic services.

“There’s no way this is sustainable. If it’s already this bad now, how much worse will it get in winter when pipes are under more pressure?” he asked.

Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the metro has noted the misleading messages posted to social media by some community leaders, who claim prolonged power supply outages would result due to the new overtime policy that came into effect on April 1.

He said these messages are devoid of any truth and falsely suggest that the metro has decided to compromise service delivery.

“It should be put on record that the adjustments to overtime hours were based on repeated findings by the Auditor General that the metro was regularly paying several employees more than 40 hours of overtime, which is a contravention of the Labour Relations Act,” Bokaba said.

He explained that the Act limits overtime to 40 hours per month and that the changes were necessary due to a financial strain on the city’s resources.

“This prompted us to make hard choices about the management of overtime, without compromising the delivery of services to the consumers,” he added.

Bokaba said the decision was made in consultation with the Regional Directors for Electricity.

He added that overtime is still permitted for emergencies, including power outages, water leaks or pipe bursts, sewer leaks, roads and stormwater, and community services.

“The city would like to assure its customers that the introduction of these financial management measures will not adversely impact the municipality’s ability to provide the much-needed services to its consumers,” Bokaba said.

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