The eThekwini municipality is grappling with parastatals and state departments that owe the city more than R230m. A report outlining the steps the city is taking to recover outstanding debt was tabled before the executive committee on Tuesday. The report revealed entities‚ including the National Ports Authority‚ Transnet‚ the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa)‚ the department of human settlements and the Ingonyama Trust‚ collectively owe the city R231.3m. This amount includes R216.6m in arrears and R14.6m in current debt. Various factors‚ identified by the report’s authors‚ led to difficulties in recovering the bad debt. Government departments and parastatals own a number of properties within the municipality and in a number of instances these departments and parastatals raise objections against the value of these properties. In most cases they do not pay for rates until the objection and thereafter an appeal process is finalised. Deputy city manager of finance Krish Kumar said pro...
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