Pretoria – Tshwane Mayor Randall Williams said businesses around the capital city had got away with not paying municipal bills for years because they would bribe the contractors assigned to disconnect services like water and electricity.
This week, Williams led an aggressive campaign to disconnect water and electricity supply to businesses, diplomatic missions and government departments owing the city billions of rands in arrears.
“They [some businesses] would bribe contractors not to disconnect them or where they have been disconnected, they bribed them to reconnect them. So we had to change the system. We have decided to have a more visual, in your face approach and go there and physically cut off,” Williams told news channel eNCA on Friday morning.
“We have different people cutting, disconnecting our customers. At the moment, in the City of Tshwane we only have 56 percent of our customers settling their monthly bill. We have 44 percent, and most of them who are able to pay, are not willing to do so.”
The mayor said even where there were disputes over billing, customers still could not opt to just stop paying the municipality. He added that Tshwane was now reading more than 85 percent of residents’ meters to avoid sending estimated bills.
“Is the system 100 percent? No. Where people dispute an amount, they can come to the City of Tshwane and we will look at their accounts and go through the amounts. Unfortunately, what happens is that many businesses dispute an amount, and then they refuse to pay. Like the Sheraton Hotel. Two years ago, they disputed one amount for that month, of R1 million. Since then, they stopped paying or were erratically paying,” said Williams.
“For example, this month January, we sent them a bill of R1 million for the current month. They only pay R100 000. Now they owe us almost R26 million.”
Since the aggressive disconnection exercise started, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), shopping malls, some government departments, state owned entities (SOEs) and companies have been forced to cough up millions in unpaid utility bills to the City of Tshwane.
The municipality is owed R17 billion by residents, government departments, SOEs and private properties who have defaulted on their accounts.
City of Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba said although he could not confirm the total amount paid as of Wednesday, he was aware that the Forest Hill Shopping Centre, for example, had made a payment of R40 million.
“This goes to show that there is money but people choose to spend on something else and not pay for services. Unfortunately we also don’t get services for free,” Bokaba said.
IOL