City of Tshwane claws back R300m in cut-off operation
Officials disconnect water and lights, and even name worst offenders on social media to get debtors to pay up
The City of Tshwane has collected more than R300m in outstanding municipal bills from businesses and government offices after launching an aggressive revenue collection drive last week.
City officials disconnected water and electricity services to some of the worst debtors and even took to naming and shaming some customers on social media.
“As of Tuesday, we have received more than R300m from 600 disconnections we made from government and properties. Some of the monies have not yet reflected. We are happy with the progress made. It’s a pity people only pay when you threaten them,” city spokesperson Selby Bokaba said.
“We have established an affordability task team which will look at profiles of customers who can’t pay. They will consider applications. We have been humane and understanding. We gave our customers the long road and waited for them to be controlled by their conscience.
“You don’t need the city to be harsh for you to make payment. We had to relook at our strategies because despite final warnings, people were not coming forward to make payments,” said Bokaba.
The disconnections have not been without dispute, though. On Monday, officials from the city cut off the water supply to the Gautrain station at Hatfield, claiming it owed about R10m.
However, Gautrain spokesperson Kesagee Nayager denied the express commuter rail operator was in debt and said it may seek legal action to have services restored.
“Gautrain owes us R10m in respect of property rates. One of their buildings, in Centurion, owes us R6m. They last made a payment in March 2020. In total they owe us R16m [for] services,” said Bokaba.
Tshwane finance MEC Peter Sutton, said less than 1% of court challenges against the city for disconnecting debtors had been successful.
He said the city anticipated there would be a fightback and had legal teams on standby to deal with challenges to the disconnections.
“Less than 2% are challenged in court and less than one [percent] has been successful. It’s not true that all the cases are challenged in court,” he said.
The DA-led coalition in the City of Johannesburg is also demanding millions of rand owed to it by government and the Gauteng provincial government for municipal services, and may soon terminate services to some of their buildings, the Sunday Times reported.
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