DURBAN - IT WAS a baptism of fire for new councillors of Msunduzi Municipality when it was revealed during the city’s first council sitting yesterday that the municipality was in debt to the tune of R1.3 billion.
Councillors were briefed on the dire state of the municipality, which showed that it was deep in debt, struggling to pay key suppliers of water, electricity and to pay workers’ salaries every month.
The council briefing comes as ratepayers’ associations wrote to the municipality complaining about the state of the city, crumbling infrastructure, the decaying city hall and other historical buildings that are in a poor state.
Municipal manager Madoda Khathide was in sombre mood as he revealed that the municipality was in debt to the tune of R1.3bn.
Khathide shocked councillors when he showed that the municipality owed Eskom R320 million and had just entered into an arrangement to pay, and that it owed water utility Umgeni Water R400m.
The revelations were extremely concerning considering the municipality has been under administration for almost two years.
The debt was revealed during a debate on the budget performance. It painted a bleak picture of the financial state of the municipality, especially as it related to collections.
Although collections were slowly improving, it showed that the situation was still dire.
The councillors said the massive losses suffered by the municipality as a result of theft or non-payment for services was the source of poor collections.
The municipality, they said, was also financially compromised by its failure to register indigent residents, pointing out that the current indigent list shows close to 3 000 people registered when the reality was that there should be 40 000 people on the list.
Khathide said: “It’s a very painful statement I am making, but if we don’t have money we will not make it. We will not turn around this situation.
“You (councillors) will keep calling us to help you and our answer will be that we cannot help you.
“If 90% of your (councillor) efforts can focus on collecting, making sure what we bill, we collect, moving forward we might be able to overcome.
“I have been here for almost 19 months now, I am still struggling, we need your support.
“We will all be assessed based on this,” said Khathide.
He said there had been good proposals from ward councillors; one of the proposals was to install meters in properties that do not have them.
“If we say there is no money, please understand there is no money, if we say reduce (cut cost) there, please reduce, that is an appeal I am making. If you look at what we owe, we owe R1.3bn, We cannot pay Eskom, we have just indeed entered into an arrangement with Eskom to pay them, we cannot pay Umgeni Water.
“Every month we are struggling to pay salaries, every month we pray to God we are able to pay salaries,” said Khathide.
He said he recently engaged with staff members who were suffering because they did not have the basic tools of trade to do their jobs.
“I urge the new leadership to visit the different departments. I recently visited the departments and found employees literally crying, saying they do not have the tools of trade.”
He also urged the councillors to take up the matter of fighting theft and the losses suffered in water and electricity.
“I would say ’forget about service delivery’ and just focus on this issue for the next 24 months, and once you do that you will see the service delivery automatically improve.”
Anthony Waldhausen, the chairperson of Msunduzi Association of Residents, Ratepayers and Civics, said the state of the city was poor.
“There is a general absence of maintenance and enforcement of legislation with regard to the preservation of our capital city’s priceless heritage architecture and in particular, our iconic and the famous city hall.”
DA councillor Rooksana Ahmed said that part of the problem was incorrect billing, with people receiving triple the normal value of their bills.
“Our income is not coherent because we are not billing all the people that use our service and that is why we have a deficit with Eskom and Umgeni,” she said.
Councillor Sandile Dlamini welcomed the frank portrayal of the state of the municipality by Khathide.
“We know the situation, we have to put a strategy on how we collect.
“We are the ones who have promoted this culture of encouraging people not to pay, we have done this,” he said.
DA councillor Bongumusa Nhlabathi said political will was needed from the ANC’s side to address the problem as most of the people that do not pay were in areas governed by the ANC.
“The ANC councillors know that if they enforce the credit control policy (collections) in their areas, the community will take to the street calling for their heads, it’s political suicide for them to push for this,” he said.
THE MERCURY