LIMPOPO – The Mayor of the Mogalakwena Municipality Ngoako Taueatsoala said their disconnecting power supply programme to those who ignore their basic responsibility will be intensified.

Residents are urged to visit the municipality’s financial department as teams will be cutting power supply to businesses, households, farms and government departments whose accounts are not up to date from Friday (April 1). This process will be repeated every Friday.

Warning letters had been sent to those owing the municipality over the past two weeks.

“We need to work on our revenue generation mechanism. It is clear that we will not be able to address all our developmental challenges if we don’t collect enough revenue,” Taueatsoala said.

The announcement follows a recent strategic planning session in which Taueatsoala said the Municipality will also be deducting certain amounts from officials’ salaries.

“Officials who are not paying for basic services will be formally informed that a certain percentage will be deducted from their salaries from April 28.”

One of the set plans to ease the Mogalakwena Local Municipality’s financial strains is to recover the outstanding money that is owed to them, which they said will place them in a better position to deliver and improve basic service delivery.

“The session raised a number of critical issues such as revenue enhancement, paying salaries with a conditional grant, payment plan implementation, illegal appointees, employees who do not come to work and overtime management which is a huge problem in local government spheres.”

Taueatsoala said one of the factors that make a good municipality is community satisfaction.

“People should know that their councillors and municipal officials care for them and are responsive to their needs. I make a clarion call to everybody to go back to basics. With that approach, we shall overcome.”

He urged municipal officials to remove all obstacles that prevent them from not collecting revenue.