PAC regional chair writes:
Just before Sharpville Day 2015, Emalahleni Municipality cut power to most of location’s business due to the debt owed to the municipality, and judging by the amount of debt, there is no way some of the debts would be settled. PAC had warned some location business in the past of what is happening, but due to their eyes shrouded in loyalty to the ruling party, they could not see.
How did the debts rise so high? Emalahleni Municipality ignored that the townships were not on equal economic basis with the town, and imposed surcharges upon surcharged on water and light bills.
The latest was the ridiculous sewage charge, where if the water account for the month is for example R2 500, so also the sewage bill is set at R2 500.
The result was that businesses ran up water bills of more than R40 000 in a short time, which grew with interest every month thus shooting debt sky high.
Let us remember that time-old grocery shops in the township were bankrupted by the municipality billing rip-off mentioned above.
Now Emalahleni Municipality has begun to pull down the remaining business types through ridiculous water bills.
Why is the Emalahleni Municipality doing this? Well they do not do this knowingly; the hope is to raise the money owe to Eskom and to others.
This is quite laughable if it were not such pain for the township. How can R2-billion be raised from a bankrupt township business is beyond reason.
The PAC has warned that there are no Bulk Electric Meters in the townships so that township business tenants have to pay both the landlord and the municipality. City business tenants, on the other hand, pay only their landlord.
For instance none of those shops at the Highveld Mall have separate account with the municipality. They pay only the mall owners. The electric bulk meters assure electric discounts.
PAC warns that the death of township business will only stamp the fact that the townships will retain their status as labour reserves as in the past. The PAC says the only solution to Emalahleni Municipality’s debts is negotiations with the coal mines, which caused the pollution of Witbank Dam with manganese.
Municipal officials must stop stealing the money; but for the stealing to stop the mines must be transparent, they should announce how much money they gave the municipality in their social responsibility; failure to be transparent would prove the collusion of the mines through bribes to hide their miserly social responsibility of building just one clinic every 10 years.
