It has been a painful exercise, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to fall behind in provision of services, says City of Tshwane spokesman Selby Bokaba.
Pretoria - The City of Tshwane has always subscribed to the notion of constructive engagement to persuade our customers, but when all avenues of discourse have been exhausted without the desired outcome, we are forced to adopt an approach, which may be unpopular, to achieve our objective.
For the past 18 months or so we have painstakingly engaged with our customers, imploring them to honour their municipal debt amounting to a whopping R6.5 billion.
When it became clear that our efforts aimed at persuading our customers to pay were in vain, we embarked on disconnecting the electricity of those whose accounts were in arrears.
The chorus of criticism reached a crescendo when we disconnected 53 of the 140 schools whose debt amounted to R21 million.
The backlash wasn’t unexpected as critics were harping on the fact that schoolchildren were writing year-end exams, but didn’t appreciate that if Eskom had disconnected us for non-payment, those schools would still be without electricity.
Fortunately, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) made an undertaking to pay R11m on behalf of the affected schools before we could reconnect them.
It made a further payment of more than R3m which brought its total payment to date to R14m and made an arrangement to settle the balance. If the balance of R7m is not paid according to our agreement, we will not hesitate to disconnect the schools.
The GDE was exemplary in honouring a payment commitment it had made. How we wish all debtors, especially government departments, businesses and residential customers could emulate it.
Last Friday, we issued an unprecedented 8 000 disconnection notices to customers who owed us R130m and briefly disconnected the Madibeng Local Municipality in the North West, which owed us a staggering R48m.
After we had disconnected it, Madibeng made a hasty payment of R15.2m before we reconnected it and promised to make monthly payments to settle its debt.
We have put it on strict terms to honour its commitment, failing which we will not hesitate to disconnect it again. Madibeng still owes us more than R33m.
The other entity owing us a lot of money is Moretele Local Municipality with a debt of R56m. It made a payment arrangement and we are reviewing that arrangement as the payment period is too long and the debt has taken the form of a loan.
We are delighted with the swift response of some government departments since we made the clarion call urging customers to pay for services. We received about R67m in the past few days from Public Works and the International Relations and Co-operation department. We have increased our manpower by appointing 30 companies to execute disconnections and reconnections. We have also put our debt collectors on terms to fast-track legal actions.
Once you have made a payment after being disconnected, we will reconnect you within four hours.
It has been a painful exercise, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to fall behind in provision of services.
We simply couldn’t continue to efficiently and sustainably administer the capital city if customers didn’t pay for services.
Charity begins at home – we have begun docking the salaries of our employees to pay for their outstanding debts. We have been sensitive and humane and explored other ways of helping our employees to avoid disconnections, including encouraging them to redeem their leave credits to settle their debt.
We are acutely aware of the impact the postal strike has had on payment for services. 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. Ways of getting information about your account include:
* Registering online on eTshwane;
* Submitting cellphone details to receive the account via SMS.
* Visiting any of our customer care walk-in centres
.
* Calling the customer care centre on 012 358 9999.
The disconnections have become a game-changer and suddenly we are seeing customers rushing to make payments.
* Selby Bokaba is a spokesman: City of Tshwane.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Pretoria News