CoGTA Urges Municipalities to Honour Their Agreement with Eskom:
“It is important for Municipalities across the country to always service their bulk accounts so that they do not prejudice those community members within their space who pay for their services”, said Minister Des van Rooyen. The Minister was responding to the current challenges that some municipalities are faced with regarding their Eskom accounts.
The Ministry for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs engaged all municipalities that are currently owing Eskom last year from February – April 2016. This engagement followed a realisation that these municipalities owed Eskom for the bulk services it was providing. The outcomes of these engagements were an agreement with short, medium to long-term actions. On short term, Eskom and Municipalities entered into a credible payments agreement to service their debts.
Even though a number of interventions were put in place to curb the debt levels, including monitoring the implementation of the action plans, it became clear that some municipalities are continuing to default from CoGTA brokered agreement entered with Eskom.
To this effect, Eskom issued the defaulting Municipalities with supply agreement breach of notices which were to be followed-up by disconnection notices. Eskom informed communities within the spaces of those municipalities that there will be disconnection and how it will be done.
Subsequent to that, Afriforum took Eskom to court in a bid to stop the power utility from cutting electricity. But the court ruling supported Eskom’s resolution to cut electricity to the defaulting municipalities. The Ministry of CoGTA again engaged in discussions with Eskom on its intention to disrupt power supply to the owing Municipalities and agreed that the respective Provincial Government’s should be appraised ahead of the 16th January 2017 deadline.
Minister Des van Rooyen met with Premier of Bokone Bophirima and Eskom Executive on 12 January 2017 to look at the how many municipalities were still in arrears and what could by the solution. At the time of this meeting, the Province had already held a meeting with respective Municipalities on 22 December 2016 to discuss the matter. To that effect, most of the Municipalities in Bokone Bophirima honoured their December payments.
The Ministry and the department held another meeting on 13 January 2017 with the Free State Province represented by DG in the Premier’s office and the HOD of COGTA at Megawatt Park. It also emerged that Free State Provincial government had already discussed the matter and some of the Municipalities in the province were paying. The CEO of Eskom reiterated that power supply will be interrupted in all municipalities that would not have honoured their due accounts.
The agreement reached with the owing Municipalities was that they should pay arrears and the current Eskom account between the 12 and 15 January 2017.
The Accounting Officers and Executing Authorities of municipalities have the responsibility to ensure that municipalities honour their agreements that they entered with Eskom and other credit providers in their space.
“We are confident that Provincial governments and Municipalities will ensure that the agreement is respected and all actions agreed upon are finalised – We urge municipalities to pay for the services they have received – it is the right thing to do”, said Minister van Rooyen.
Distributed by APO on behalf of Republic of South Africa: Department of Government Communication and Information.
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Source: APO – Africa-Newsroom: latest news releases related to Africa
