The theme for the gathering was distinctly financial with the quarterly Service Delivery Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIP) dominating the agenda.
Some of the challenges addressed in the report were the low collection rate and municipal underspending, particularly unspent grants.
Electricity sales were 3.62 percent below the budgeted income.
Individual customers were shown to have reduced their overall electricity consumption.
The reduction in electricity usage is thought to be linked to load shedding with many customers turning to renewable energy instead of relying on power sources provided by the municipality.
The under collection of fines was also a challenge named in the SDBIP report.
Only R126-million of the R184-m budgeted income has been collected due to a decrease in the collection rate of traffic fines and disconnection fees.
Councillor Niel Diamond urged the metro to take a more assertive approach to debt collecting, saying that the debtors book was “becoming a monster”.
Opposition parties were outspoken on the issue of underspending, particularly the large amount of unspent grants.
Councillor Izak Berg characterised the underspending of R1.5-billion in grants as criminal, and called for charges to be brought against officials that do not assist the metro in spending their allocated grants.
Opposition parties also called for unspent funds to be used as a subsidy for the proposed sixth EMM municipal bond.
