During the virtual council meeting on 28 October, the municipality revealed that it currently owes Eskom R663,897,627 and Rand Water, R97,777,485.
Eskom earlier rejected a municipal proposal to pay its current account and the arrears amount over 54 months.
This led to a court battle, which was temporarily halted when the municipality successfully interdicted Eskom from cutting its electricity.
Eskom recently approached the municipality to develop a new ar- rangement to address its arrears. Merafong then proposed an 84-month payment plan with Eskom writing off half of the total interest that was levied, among other things. Eskom rejected the arrangement and the energy provider suggested a maximum payback time of 60 months instead.
Merafong was supposed to pay R67,394,349 at the end of August and R52,582,985.75 at the end of September.
The municipality could only pay R3,131,283.42, including the pro- posed arrangement of R1,131,283.42 in September. An amount of R630,290,430 is outstanding on its bulk accounts. The municipality paid its full Rand Water account for August during September, and the outstanding amount for September was to be paid weekly, as and when money becomes available.
Meanwhile, the consumer debt to the municipality is increasing at an alarming rate.
Council also heard that its debtors had increased by a staggering R244,803,365 for the three months ending on 30 September. By the end of September, debtors owed the municipality a massive R2,928,830,156.
The debt of more than 120 days in arrears has been handed over to five debt collectors appointed by the municipality. The municipality had only made provision for bad debt to the amount of R480,198,683 for the 12 months of the current financial year.
