Endumeni’s debt to Eskom is R153 million and continues to grow. This is in spite of a pay plan put in operation after Eskom suddenly introduced ‘load[1]reduction’, which saw Endumeni residents go for hours without power last December.
This was revealed at a quarterly municipal meeting which saw various departments giving feedback to councillors on issues ranging from pothole repairs to revenue collection and others. Revenue manager Calvin Masondo said that the overall collection loss was R150 million, of which R47.5 million was attributable to electricity theft.
“We are looking at an action plan to remedy these issues,” he told councillors. He said that the department will be ‘jacking up its customer care policy’ to get feedback from consumers.
He added that customers are not getting their statements, which is the result of the non-functioning post office. However, there are plans to upgrade the delivery via email and even hand-delivery for customers who don’t have email. “There are 2000 non[1]registered electricity meters that need to be disconnected. In terms of disconnections, non-payers will be blocked (from buying pre-paid power), but those who have already applied for amnesty will be exonerated. Chief Executive Officer Bonga Mkhize said that the revenue committee had decided to hire an external company to help them with revenue collection.
“We have 3000 accounts that need to be blocked and because we don’t have the capacity, this may take our current staff three months to block all those accounts. We don’t have a system and we are currently doing it manually; that’s why we need to procure a system that can assist us over the next 36 months to monitor our revenue collection,” Mkhize said.
She concluded by saying that the National Treasury has conditionally approved the municipality’s debt relief, which they had applied for. Pothole project In August, the Technical Services Department reported that up to 530 square metres of potholes were fixed. However, their project was hampered by old and broken equipment, and a grader had to be sourced from Umzinyathi Municipality.
A monthly development plan will be given to all councillors, outlining the work done in all wards. Turning to street lights, it was said that all overhead cables and globes would be changed to aluminum globes to fix the town’s damaged streetlights. Councillor Zitha Shelembe and Councillor Amina Sadeck said in one voice that they were not happy with the report given by the Technical Department.
“There are no specifics, so we cannot go back to the community and account for why certain roads haven’t been fixed or why the streets are still dark without street lights for months,” argued Shelembe. He also added that the TLB hasn’t been working for months after floods had affected his ward earlier in the year. “
With the summer rain approaching, the municipality will need a TLB to channel water into the stormwater drains. As for street lights, we have not seen any replaced and our streets remain dark,” concluded Shelembe. Cllr Sadeck highlighted that although some potholes had been patched in her ward (3), a lot more still needs to be done. Cllr Abdool said he was ‘disgusted by these reports’, as he has done an oversight in Ward 7 and the roads are not drivable, especially in Kwathelaphi, Kunene Farm, and Payne Farm. “The grader spends more time in the mechanical shop than it does repairing our roads,” exclaimed Abdool.
He added that the ‘Electrical Department is a mess’. He concluded by saying that they are getting insulted by the community for not being able to deliver on their service delivery promises. These issues will all be looked at and councillors will be receiving feedback, the meeting concluded.
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