Municipality warns residents who steal services

BARBERTON – The City of Mbombela Local Municipality has sent out a stern warning to residents who fail to pay municipal services and end up bridging water pipes and electricity.

The spokesperson of the municipality, Joseph Ngala said stealing municipal services is a criminal offence. “There are residents who are not paying municipal bills, but they have water and electricity in their yards which means they have bridged electricity and water. We are not going to be apologetic to those people who are stealing municipal services. Their days are numbered as we are going to disconnect the services so that they can do the right thing. We are going to issue them fines and they must also pay a re-connection fee of the services,”he said.

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Ngala said even though the municipality has introduced the indigent program, but still people are not willing to cooperate. “This program was aimed to assist those who can’t afford to settle their bills, what we do as a municipality, we reduce the balance. It is very sad to find out that still people are failing to meet us half way.

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We understand that some of them are unemployed, but they don’t bother to come forward and present their case to the municipality so that we can be able to find other options to tackle the matter. It’s very disturbing to find out that some of the people who are not paying their bills are working,” he said.

Mpumalanga News learnt that some of the sections where the municipality will put more attention is at Mgababa in extension 11 where illegal connections are a nightmare.