Tshwane mayor Smangaliso Mkhatshwa has refused to halt electricity disconnections to non-paying residents in Pretoria and Centurion, saying the municipality could not afford to do so, according to a report in Business Day today.
Mkhatshwa said a previous effort to halt electricity cut-offs on condition that defaulters paid their bills had only seen non-payment by residents increase.
“We are experiencing problems with our cash flow because people took advantage of what I thought was a reasonable concession and did not pay,” he is reported as saying.
The newspaper says that trade union Solidarity handed the mayor a statement during yesterday’s year-end media briefing calling for a review of the city’s accounting systems by an external party.
The predominantly Afrikaans union also plans to lodge a complaint of poor service delivery with the public protector, the report said.
Meanwhile, the Freedom Front Plus apparently filed a complaint late yesterday with the Human Rights Commission alleging that the cut-offs were being conducted illegally, as residents whose power has been cut off had not been given access to the courts to challenge the decision.
The newspaper says Mkhatshwa has denied allegations that they were “cutting power supplies without a valid court order”. He said they had followed procedures set out in the Municipal Finance Act for connections and disconnections, and that the same firm had been carrying out these functions for the past two years without complaints from the public.
Residents could approach the metro if they were unable to pay and a payment plan could be set up, he said.
Mkhatshwa said, however, that since the council had reintroduced credit control measures, it had seen a marked increase in payments.
“In October the average collected cash was R488-million, in November it had increased to R641-million and by December 10 the council had already collected R285-million,” he is reported as saying.
“The minute we stopped credit control measures, payments plummeted. We are moving back towards a 97% collection rate and hope to do even better,” Mkhatshwa said.
The mayor said the council had to answer to the auditor general if it did not collect revenue. The city loses R1-million a month from illegal power connections.
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