Tuesday, February 13, 2024 – The City of Tshwane has set itself an ambitious goal of collecting an additional R1-billion per month for the next six months from defaulting customers and businesses as part of its financial rescue mission.
The city, home to more than four million residents, has been
candid about its severe financial constraints, part of which it has attributed
to the previous ANC-led administration which was at the helm for nearly two
decades before it was replaced by a DA-led coalition in 2016.
The metro is currently collecting almost
R3-billion a month, but has a massive deficit owing to a recent protracted
municipal strike and load shedding, among other issues.
With R23.3-billion in its debtors’ book,
executive mayor Cilliers Brink said his administration intended to convert it
into cash which could help turn the tide.
“If we succeed, we improve our cash flow, our
Eskom account as well as our credibility and creditworthiness. This also buys
us the time to fix problems with tariffs and to achieve better value for money
in supply chain management.”
The city is not oblivious to the challenges
ahead.
Brink said, “If we do not succeed, we will have
to make a number of fundamental changes to the way we deliver services by the
end of June 2024 when a new budget must be adopted.”
It will not be the first time that the city has made tough
decisions.
In 2023, it refused to bow to political pressure
to grant thousands of municipal workers a 5.4% salary increase, the final phase
of a three-year wage agreement signed at the South African Local Government
Bargaining Council in 2021.
This
later led to a protracted municipal strike and the collapse of services
including waste collection, attending to electricity and water outages, and
fixing leaks, potholes and streetlights. It turned violent and 255 vehicles
belonging to the city were torched.
While addressing journalists at Tshwane House on
Monday, Brink admitted that the strike hurt the city’s finances, but said the
total monetary cost had not been quantified.
Despite this, Brink maintained that the damage
was “significantly less” than the R600-million it would have cost the city to
grant the salary increases.
The city’s management says it can’t afford a
salary increase this year because its R45-billion budget for the 2023/24
financial year was underfunded.
In addition to refusing worker increases, the
city staggered the payment of a 13th cheque to all workers over three months.
This was necessitated by the failure to meet the revenue collection target.
Last week, the city embarked on a campaign to clamp down on
clients who failed to pay their bills, including households and businesses, in
an attempt to claw back some of the more than R6-billion owed to the
municipality.
The cut-off campaign, named #TshwaneYaTima (Tshwane Switches Off), was introduced in 2022 and in May 2023 Brink declared it a standard operating procedure.
Now, the city is looking at rolling out
#TshwaneYaTima more intensely than in the past.
The
DA-led administration has often come under scrutiny from opposition political
parties for deteriorated service delivery, with parties like the EFF suggesting
that services are only delivered to affluent areas.
Responding to this, Brink said, “We know that
service delivery in Tshwane is not where it should be. We have to be clear
about that… The financial constraints in the city are among the key reasons why
service delivery is not on par.”
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