VANDERBIJLPARK – Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi visited Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) to announce a provincial government resolution to offer all the necessary support needed to rescue the municipality on Wednesday, June 7.

His visit was a formal briefing by the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) aimed at finding inputs from the embattled municipality’s Mayoral Committee on how best to rescue their service delivery headaches.

The municipality has been in the news recently when its employees protested over unpaid May salaries.

This is after, the cash-strapped municipality’s bank accounts were attached by Eskom and Rand Water due to its failure to pay the debt owed.

Addressing the meeting held at the municipality’s council chambers, Lesufi said “The leadership of this municipality has presented to us ways in which GPG can assist in rescuing this municipality, however, there are five areas of deep concern. The first one is the debt management of Emfuleni; with the latest audit reports it is quite clear that the municipality is insolvent. ELM owes Eskom 6 billion, the only way to get out of the debt trap is to abide by the plan as presented to us by the Emfuleni Executive management”.

“The audit outcome is number two of the concerns, the report is damaging as it speaks to the mismanagement of public resources in the municipality. The day-to-day challenge of Emfuleni including the non-payment of salaries comes as a third challenge. The viability of the municipality is number four on the list, ELM keeps on piling up debt through several ways, water and electricity losses top the list, GPG is happy with plan. GPG intervention comes in at number five of the list,” Premier added.