#Tshwaneyatima ‘targeting us’ – locals complain
“Why would the municipality want to start here, whereas there are businesses and suburbs that owe millions of rands?"
The Tshwane metro says its campaign to cut of electricity supply for non-payment is not targeting Mamelodi residents.
The Mamelodi branch of the South African national civic organisation (Sanco) had accused the metro of implementing it’s #TshwaneYaTima programme unfairly in the area.
The metro’s TshwaneYaTima programme sought to aggressively recover debt from defaulting customers by switching off their services.
“Tshwane has seven regions and is targeting all its customers who are not paying for services,” said metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo.
“This includes those that have connected water and electricity illegally.”
He said it was unfortunate that a community organisation would prevent the city from enforcing a legislated action against defaulting customers.
CREDIT CONTROL MEASURES WERE INDISCRIMINATIVE
Furthermore, Mashigo said the metro’s credit control measures were indiscriminative, saying that they simply targeted those who were defaulting.
He said as a leader of the community, the metro expected Sanco to engage it in order to seek clarity on the said project.
The spokesperson went further to emphasise that defaulting customers also included government departments, employees, councillors, embassies, entities, businesses and residents.
Mamelodi Sanco secretary Millicent Mtshweni questioned why out of all places would the municipality start switching off power supply in Mamelodi.
“Why would the municipality want to start here, whereas there are businesses and suburbs that owe millions of Rand? Why would we pay rent if we don’t know how much we owe the metro?” Mtshweni asked.
She said it did not make sense for community members to pay rent while some were under the indigent policy, which meant they were exempt from paying rent.
#TSHWANEYATIMA – NOT TARGETING MAMELODI RESIDENTS
However, Mashigo dismissed allegations that the municipality was targeting Mamelodi residents.
On the issue of residents not getting their statements, Mashigo told Rekord that there were services such as e-Tshwane where customers could obtain their statement from or the metro’s walk-in customer service centre.
“Residents are urged to get their tangible statement from the customer service walk-in-centres.”
Mashigo also reminded residents that the municipality did not have the liberty of generating its own power, but relies on the power utility, Eskom, for such, hence the need to continue with #TshwaneYaTima so it can service its own debt.
“We do not generate our own power, we buy from Eskom, and therefore, we need to pay our creditors. We need to recoup the money owed to the municipality in order to pay Eskom,” he concluded.
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