Emalahleni Municipality drowning in water debt

Emalahleni’s water accounts are increasing not drop by drop, but buckets by buckets.

At the end of March, the local municipality owed the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) R175 million, Anglo Operations more than R34 million plus over R8 million for interest and Glencore R6.2 million.

“Our debt to DWS incurred because we did not receive invoices and used average figures,” Mr Lebo Mofokeng municipal spokesperson explained.

He said the municipality queried the R8 594 249 interest from Anglo and is still awaiting their response.

According to the Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Ms Trudie Grové-Morgan the municipality also owes Nuwater South Africa R3.2 million.

The municipality did confirm the latter.

It is not only service providers for water that is knocking on the door for payment, but Eskom is also queuing up.

The municipality owes the struggling power utility R3 896 059 238.

Municipalities can’t pay up because they’re not being paid.

The municipality has largely blamed its failure to pay on residents and governmental departments who continue to default.

Residents have attributed their failure to pay for municipal services to COVID-19, high levels of unemployment, and poverty.

“Another concern with the municipality is their water distribution loss of 47% which has resulted in a situation where there is no money to upgrade the capacity of their water treatment plants. As a result, the municipality is purchasing water from outside entities at escalated tariffs,” Grové-Morgan said.

This statement by Grové-Morgan can be echoed as not a day goes by that suburbs are left dry because of pipe breaks.

On ward WhatsApp groups leaking pipes and water meters are reported daily, but no responses are coming through that the leaks are fixed. In fact, some are reported weeks on end.

In an attempt to get consumers to use water wisely the municipality is introducing a water conservation fee which will be implemented on an incremental block tariff basis. This means the more you use, the higher the price. The water conservation fee will be triggered when consumption is 31kl and more.

“Why penalise the consumer when the municipality is at fault. It is their infrastructure that has been neglected and now shows its vulnerability. They should sweep the dirt off their own front porch before they start complaining about the dust on their neighbour’s porch,” local resident Mr John Cornish said.

Grové-Morgan said the DA will ask its Members of the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature (MPLs) to petition MEC of CoGTA, Mandla Msibi, to place under provincial administration municipalities that fail to pay service providers for water and electricity.

“Currently, five Mpumalanga municipalities owe service providers around R1 033 000 000 for water because of corruption a lack of sound financial management,” Grové-Morgan said.

The DA will also call for the ring-fencing of ratepayers’ monthly water and electricity bills to be paid directly to the relevant service providers and not directly to the municipalities.