Durban - KwaZulu-Natal education department offices across the eThekwini Municipality could soon find themselves without water and electricity as the city cuts services owing to a staggering R50 million utility services debt.
This was the blunt threat made by city manager S’bu Sithole during an executive committee meeting on council finances. His suggestion received a lukewarm response from ANC councillors in the committee, but was backed by the DA.
ANC councillors called for a more “diplomatic” approach.
Earlier this month, The Mercury reported that the city was owed R2 billion in rates, with government departments and parastatals some of the biggest defaulters.
Of the R48m that schools owe the city, about R18m of that debt is more than three months old. Sithole said the city needed to “find a way” for the schools to settle their debt.
“Our target should be the department, in that we switch off the department head office and so on. But it is something that we need to deal with,” he said.
The DA’s Zwakele Mncwango supported this, saying: “It is really a concern if you look at how much they owe the city. When I was in Cape Town, I checked how they (deal with schools), they link it to the department. They disconnect the services to any building owned by the department. We need to maybe negotiate with the province to say, ‘if you fail to pay, we won’t disconnect the school, but the department’. They have offices in Durban… That’s the only way they will pay this money.”
Mncwango said the department knew the city would be “sensitive” in shutting down school services.
ANC councillor Fawzia Peer said shutting down departmental services would be “harsh”. But Mncwango insisted it could be done.
Deputy mayor Nomvuzo Shabalala described the move to shut down services as “cruel”. She did, however, say the department needed to understand that the city had to pay for its bulk services infrastructure.
“We must sit down and discuss with them, if that fails, that’s when we can look at other options,” she said.
Approached for comment later, Sithole said switching off the schools would be “pointless”.
“If we disconnect the schools, it’s got unintended consequences. It can affect education outcomes. You will find most of these schools are in townships and we think the best way really is for the department to pay for the schools directly to the municipality. That’s what we want to explore,” he said.
“We want to discuss with the department how it can make sure there are no schools indebted to us. We also have to manage services and so on. We can only help schools where, for example, we know the water from the school is being stolen by informal settlements without water. That’s where we can come in to mitigate.
The Mercury