After facing near bankruptcy, Ilembe municipality’s finances are finally looking up.
Poor planning and financial management left the new council, elected in August 2016, with R164 million debt and digging into their reserves to keep afloat.
Drought, the billing system and ageing infrastructure were just a few reasons for their downfall. In a year-end review press briefing, Ilembe mayor Sduduzo Gumede announced that turn around strategies had so far helped reduce the municipality’s debt by R90 million.
One of the municipality’s main problems was the low collection rate, which is slowly improving.
“Our collection rate has improved from 55 percent to 62 percent which amounts to about R10 million a month. It is not yet at the desired level but we are making improvements.”
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Gumede said that bad debt and noncollectables were written off in the year despite attempts to recover the money.
He said to remedy the situation, council adopted a debt recovery plan which is monitored on a monthly basis. A new debt collector has also been appointed.
“People need to know that we can only deliver a service if they pay for it. Residents are not paying their debt and are finding ways to bypass the meters.”
It was recently found that more than 10 000 households in Ilembe are not paying for water services. Gumede said the municipality has embarked on a drive-by to verify all meters.
In one year 4084 households have been connected to water, however, many ratepayers face a continuous problem of poor water quality and restrictions.
These faults were attributed to ageing infrastructure.
The mayor said a new call centre was to be put in place to manage and respond to problems and that the municipality was working on fixing infrastructure but that they were constrained by a tight budget.
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