It has been a strenuous few days for the municipality as they are waiting for the outcome of Eskom’s decision whether to cut bulk electricity to the municipality or not.
Talks have been going on for the past week, but so far no agreement has been reached.
The municipality is still facing an impossible task of paying more than R400-million to prevent possible bulk interruptions within this month.
In another effort to get funds to pay Eskom, the municipality is selling a piece of land, which is part of non productive assets.
“We followed the supply chain processes and placed an advertisement calling on potential bidders to make an offer. The tender was closed on February 1 and so far four local potential buyers is showing interest,” said Mr Kingdom Mabuza, municipal spokesperson.
The selling of the piece of land forms part of the proposal to Eskom where the municipality will redirect the money, they get for selling the land, to the power house.
“We are in the process of putting a significant alternative amount in place and in principle received agreement from Eskom to meet later this week to discuss our proposals. I am still convinced that we will find a solution but need to caution that the insufficient support by businesses, government and households to settle their arrears are making this process more difficult,” Mabuza said.
The man at the helm of negotiations with the utility giant, Municipal Manager Mr Theo van Vuuren said the municipality hoped that the communities with arrears will make use of the incentive scheme and settle part of the massive outstanding amounts to the municipality.
“However to date the reaction on this was slow and I am still hopeful that this will gain momentum. Credit control initiatives are however more positive but as mentioned before, cut offs are in some areas met with violent resistance while illegal connections cut offs are been restored at an alarming rate. This will however not deter us from continuing to re disconnect and should this obstructive behaviour continue we will have to switch off the affected areas in total,” Van Vuuren said.
The municipality introduced an incentive that will run until March 31.
In trying to encourage customers to bring arrear accounts in good standing, council has in terms of the credit policy, decided to enforce the following incentives: apply a 10% discount on current account payments if accounts are paid in full on or before the third of the month; on arrears of shorter than 90 days, waive interest plus 10% of the capital amount; on arrears of between 90 and 180 days waive interest plus 50% of capital; on arrears of older than 180 days waive interest plus 50% of capital; on partial payments of above 50% will only be considered for waiving of interest.
The capital discount is capped at R50 000, except in exceptional cases which further discounts can be negotiated.
“Should customers not have made arrangements by the end of March or have settled their accounts in full, they will be cut off and defaulters blacklisted,” Mabuza said.
At present all 17 Eskom accounts are paid up to date.
In total an amount of more than R80-million has been paid to Eskom since the first notice of bulk disruptions was published.
In addition further payments towards the winter month arrears were made and a cogent payment proposal plan was duly submitted to Eskom showing how the local municipality intends to deal with outstanding debt of R940-million.
Eskom was also put on the spot when it came to light that they owe the municipality R12-million on outstanding accounts for properties in eMalahleni.
They responded and said they are in discussions with the local municipality in an effort to find a speedy resolution for the billing issues.
