ELM salaries to be paid on time this week
ELM employee and councillor salaries will be paid on time this week despite the municipality’s bank accounts being attached by Rand Water on debt exceeding R1 billion, said ELM.
ELM on Monday confirmed that municipal salaries for officials and councillors would be paid on Tuesday, 25 April – the usual payment date.
Rand Water’s recent attachment of ELM’s account – and its seamless release of salaries at month-end April – starkly contrasts Eskom’s openly predatory style in its previous attachments on the municipality.
Eskom was however in April beaten to the post on attachments by Rand Water, which attached before Eskom could yet again leech ELM of all its service delivery funding.
Eskom – specifically its Gauteng cluster – is notorious for using salaries as a bargaining chip in its dealings with ELM on more than R6 billion owed to the bulk utility – delaying salary payments several times and sparking union protests.
Such demands include handing the ELM electrical department and its revenues over to Eskom in toto – thus denying the struggling local authority most of its revenue essential for service delivery.
ELM is focusing on having its R6 billion debt to Eskom – and the additional R1 billion owed to Rand Water – written off by the national Treasury as a long-term solution to the seemingly never-ending cycle of attachments and seizing of grant funding intended for service delivery.
But conditions attached to such debt write-offs are steep – including rigorous credit control measures to recover more than R5 billion owed to ELM by residents and businesses and a massive expansion of smart meter technology on water and power.
A Treasury write-off would also require a massive effort to dramatically reduce especially water distribution losses – up to 50% of all drinking water is lost – through badly-maintained water and sanitation infrastructure.
However, such is the extent of power theft through illegal connections and even the failure by many businesses to pay business rates for electricity or non-payment of their accounts, that stringent debt control is likely to create a major political problem so close to the 2024 general election.
However, ELM is well-positioned with its highly-advanced smart meter programme on both water and electricity to remove its corrupt and inefficient billing system over time.
