Emalahleni Local Municipality managed to keep the lights on while owing Eskom millions.
But as residents ready themselves for the onslaught of winter, the electricity usage are bound to increase.
During winter, heaters are running and everyone stays inside which causes the TV to be on more often, the lights are on more, the kids are inside, the refrigerator is in full use and the geyser’s thermostat is turned up a notch.
On the other hand not all residents are paying their electricity bills and this is putting the municipality under strain.
“The main challenge remains the payment of our current accounts where we still experience a gap of close to 40% between what we are billed and what we are able to recover from customers. This aspect has been elaborated on before and remains the main focus of the municipality to address. Until that gap is closed we will continue struggling to fund our service delivery,” said the Municipal Manager, Mr Theo van Vuuren.
A revised and more favourable payment plan was agreed to with Eskom and also adopted by the council.
It makes provision for the repayment of outstanding debt over a period of 24 months and during that period interest will be suppressed.
The municipality must still pay Eskom an amount of R13 million on secondary accounts and R107 million on the main account before the end of June to be up to date with its current account. The first capital payments against the outstanding debt are scheduled in October this year on the main account.
For 2015/2016 the municipality paid Eskom close to R1 billion.
Emalahleni was actually the only municipality in the province with outstanding debt who managed to reduce its outstanding accounts during that period.
“With your assistance we will be able to meet our obligations and once we have closed the gap between income and expenditure in respect of electricity, our available funding towards service delivery will allow for rapid service delivery at the level you deserve. Please work with us on this,” Van Vuuren asked.
The financial dire straits the city is experiencing is not being ignored by the municipality.
Van Vuuren said when unemployed, any person, not withstanding age, gender or race can apply to the municipality to be registered as an indigent.
On the municipal website the current council indigent policy and procedures are listed.
“In short, council will, if somebody registered and has been verified as correct, subsidize such a household with basic water (6KL per month), electricity (certain basic monthly limit), waste and sanitation,” he shared the news.
To qualify for this the total household income must be below a certain level, in this case below or equal the sum of a maximum of two state pensions.
Any person can apply with the municipality’s social workers on the third floor and need to bring with ID, proof of income, proof of unemployment and a municipal account.
Only people with municipal accounts can apply as the subsidy is applicable to the account.
Please note that in the past the council only accepted applications for indigents once a year as we need to make provision for this in our budget. Council has now approved that indigents can be registered throughout the year.
In cases where a customer is defaulting on an account and may have developed arrears, the credit control policy of the council allows certain guidelines within which the credit manager, the chief financial officer or the municipal manager can try to accommodate the customer, based on each case specific merit.
This includes arrangement of repayment terms, providing moratorium on payments for specific periods and in some cases write offs of certain amounts to assist to correct the situation.
“Should you want to make use of this please approach us as soon as possible. We are aggressively starting to address the more than 37 000 households with outstanding debt and it’s preferable to make arrangements before being disconnected,” said Van Vuuren.
To date 14 000 households have already been registered as indigent for 2016/17.
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