HIGHVELD – The Democratic Alliance (DA) has welcomed the electricity maintenance pilot project introduced by the Gert Sibande District Municipality (GSDM) to intervene in the Govan Mbeki Municipality’s Eskom debt of R1.8 billion which was charged at an interest of R20 645 151 in March.
In a special council meeting held on Thursday, 18 June, the two municipalities resolved that GSDM will be appointing an implementing agency for the next four years and take over the negotiations between Eskom and GMM since Eskom has allegedly lost all trust in GMM.
In a press statement, the DA said it can only hope that this intervention will be a great relief to the communities of eMzinoni and Bethal which have suffered for years with unpredicted power cuts.
Also read: Elderly affected by power cuts in Bethal
“This however comes with extreme consequences as far as the leadership in GMM is concerned; the municipality’s collapsing infrastructure is not being maintained.
“GMM does not have meters at stores and faulty meter are being bypassed for free electricity connections.”
Adding to this are the bare and unsafe wire connections, a backlog on houses that need to be electrified, a high number of illegal connections, GMM does not have a suitable plan in place to service Eskom’s current account and GMM has no accurate customer data.
“Apart from the municipality’s problem in collecting revenue, it has been unable to pay Eskom on a monthly basis and has been unable to commit to pay its current accounts due to illegal power connections and exceeding the maximum demand,” the DA stated.
Also read: Be ready to pay more to Govan Mbeki Municipality
The DA has previously requested intervention in the current power woes faced by GMM.
The party claimed that in 2018 it submitted a motion that sought among other things, to deal with electricity losses in GMM. They submitted questions to the Govan Mbeki council in 2018 seeking to ring-fence electricity payments.
When there was no response from the municipality, the DA approached the Mpumalanga MEC for Cogta, Mr Mandla Msibi, earlier in 2020 and approached the Minister of Cogta, Dr Nkosisana Dlamini-Zuma, requesting for urgent intervention, but till this day there have been no response.
The DA will continue to monitor all developments in the four-year project.
Also read: GMM blames Apartheid, notified maximum demand and illegal connections for Bethal’s electricity woes
