Eskom took R300 million for ELM debt in December
Eskom has taken more than R300 million in grant funding earmarked for service delivery from the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) in December alone since attaching their bank accounts on debt now close to R6 billion.
This emerged as the two warring state entities this week inched towards an agreement after weeks of high-level brinkmanship with threats of an Eskom power blockade of Emfuleni and national Government intervention to pay ELM salaries.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and ELM Executive Mayor Sipho Radebe are expecting to broker a final Eskom deal at a high-level meeting on Thursday this week to resolve the crisis, said municipal roleplayers.
This follows an apparent thaw late last week and earlier this week between the two parties in which agreement was reached to release ELM’s seized vehicle fleet despite no general agreement yet in place.
As of publication time, this had not actually taken place with administrative steps, including another temporary bank attachment lifting to pay return costs, still in the pipeline, said ELM sources.
Eskom Gauteng last week threatened to cut power supply to Emfuleni, which would have unleashed a massive political, social and humanitarian backlash and violate recent Constitutional Court judgments on cutting power to municipalities.
Eskom Gauteng has officially denied threatening to cut power supply, but Vaalweekblad is in possession of official Eskom documentation threatening not only to cut electricity, but to sell seized municipal assets.
An Eskom letter, dated 10 January 2023 and signed by Mpumelelo Mnyani, Senior Manager Retail of the Gauteng Cluster, clearly makes the threat of cutting off power supply if agreement is not reached.
“Eskom can unfortunately no longer continue with the supply of electricity whilst there is no payment commitment on the part of the municipality”, said the letter.
Yet Eskom Gauteng subsequently responded to a media inquiry by Vaalweekblad asking for confirmation of the cut-off threat by denying it.
“Eskom has not threatened to cut electricity supply to the municipality but pursuing the municipality to settle its debt due to Eskom,” the bulk utility said in an e-mail response.
Eskom has also refused to confirm how much money it seized from ELM bank accounts so far since attaching ELM accounts in December, due to litigation, and also on the return of the ELM fleet.
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