The City of Tshwane has restored electricity supply to the Madibeng Local Municipality in the North West Province after they made a payment totaling R15.2 million.

Madibeng’s power was briefly disconnected on Friday after they failed to honour their municipal debt of more than R48 million owed to the City of Tshwane. Tshwane is the bulk supplier of electricity and water to various municipalities.

City Manager of Tshwane, Jason Ngobeni, said the reconnection of Madibeng was based on strict terms that they settle their account in full.

“We have agreed with Madibeng that they should meet their monthly payments and ultimately pay us in full to avoid future disconnections. After this payment, they still have a balance of over R33 million”, Ngobeni said.

Tshwane is currently reviewing payment arrangements entered into with some of the municipalities, as some of the arrangements seem to exceed the normal repayment period and are taking the form of a loan, instead of a payment arrangement.

Upping the ante

A fortnight ago the city embarked on a drastic and unprecedented course of action to disconnect services to all accounts that are in arrears in a bid to recover R6.5 billion of outstanding debt owed to the municipality.

From the 1st to the 13th of November, the city has collected R883 million from defaulting customers and has to date successfully disconnected 6 847 accounts. On Friday 1 November 2014 the city disconnected an unprecedented 8 000 accounts that were in arrears with a collective debt of R130 million.

According to the municipality when the response to their request for payment was not satisfactory, they began the disconnection process and started with 53 of the 140 schools whose accounts were in arrears. Gauteng Department of Education has since made the payment on behalf of the schools and the schools have been reconnected.

The City has had a series of engagements with various government departments, entities, other municipalities, businesses and residential consumers weekly, monthly and quarterly through the Government Debt Forum with a view to get them to settle their accounts.

Ngobeni says the city has increased its manpower on the ground by appointing 30 companies to execute disconnections and reconnections. “We have also put our debt collectors on terms to fast-track legal actions.”

He adds that they are acutely aware of the impact the Post Office strike has had on the payment of services in respect of the delivery of accounts, however, in terms of Section 27 (2) of the Municipal Property Rates Act 6, of 2004, the onus is on the customer to pay their municipal account whether or not they have received a written account.

“We urge all our customers to register on eTshwane and get their statements online or via MMS to enable them to easily make their payments.

The revenue collection drive is proceeding very well. Customers are coming forward to make payments. Our finance offices are bursting at the seams with customers frantically coming to make payments to avoid being disconnected. We are not yet where we want to be, but we are gradually getting there.

We are upping the ante and soon we will increase the number of daily disconnections to show that we mean business,” Ngobeni cautioned.