Sam Nape writes:
From a line-up of about 278 South African municipalities, Emalahleni Municipality still comes out on top for achieving the following awards:
A city of decorated potholes;
A city proud of its dirty environment;
A city overpopulated by drug addicts;
A city populated by the unemployed youth;
A city above R1.9 billion budget out of 20 defaulting smaller municipalities targeted by Eskom for the June electrical shutdown because of its debt of more than R450 million.
Anything said contrary to the above will be labelled as manipulated blatant lies to eMalahleni local authority not performing well.
The recent scarecrow announced by Eskom to legally disconnect power to our disgruntled community as regulated by Act 4 of 2006. eMalahleni finds itself as a laughing stock when, ironically it mines the coal and generates electricity which it enjoys and not paying for it before distribution around the country.
Could it be the ratepayers who fail to meet their obligations to service the electricity account which has turned out to be exorbitant compared to other affected municipalities albeit its proximity to the national grid? Or could it be its cloud of inefficient and ineffective administration in more than two years?
Do we point the finger at the culture of non-payment by the community or our administrator’s financial mismanagement or misappropriation of this electricity account saga? If both, who must mitigate on reduction, intervene, and reduce consumption?
Whilst on the other hand the Demarcation Board is determining the municipality boundaries which include this lame duck eMalahleni which is cash-strapped to feed another open hungry mouth, Victor Khanyi Local Municipality (Delmas).
Should Eskom shutdown eMalahleni, local mines will fail to mine coal, local power stations will fail to generate electricity, Eskom will fail to distribute energy and bill other municipalities, South Africa will be in the dark.
Local commercial retailers, major industrial concerns and households (domestic) will reel on their knees. The impact will be severely felt by workers who walk tall by being employed. Some big local industries have already shut down some of their productive furnaces due to insecure electricity supply from Eskom.
This underpins the household campaign of switching off our water geysers, some of our rooms left in the dark at the high risk of night prowlers or robbers who had free access into our houses whilst asleep.
But lo! Some public schools had their unattended classroom lights burning 24/7 even during school holidays. But lo! municipal public streetlights were shining 24/7 to the amazement of daytime crawling inserts.
eMalahleni residents wait with great interest to the outcome of this paralyzing indictment before the winter period of high-energy consumption.
