R56-m water debt for Zululand District
Department threatens to cut water supply next week
THE Zululand District Municipality is facing water cuts in December due to more than R56-million being owed to the Department of Water and Sanitation.
The municipality is among 30 in the country that have been given notices to pay up by 8 December or have their bulk water supply terminated.
Minister Nomvula Mokonyane on Monday revealed that the department is owed a total of R10.7-billion in outstanding payments for water supplied, with R3,9-billion of that debt owed to the Water Trading Entity of the department and R6,8-billion owed to the various Water Boards.
‘The department and water boards have at various levels sought to resolve the outstanding debt matter using various structures within the state such as the Inter-Governmental Relations framework and to date these have failed to yield the desired outcomes,’ Mokonyane said.
Mokonyane said while they will continue to engage municipalities in this regard, they have resorted to implementing Section 59(3)(b) of the National Water Act, which allows the Department to restrict or suspend the flow of water to defaulting municipalities.
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OR Tambo District Municipality was noted as the only one currently servicing its debt in line with a payment plan agreed to with the department.
‘The rest are still failing to settle the debt and as such the debt is rising unabated. To arrest the growing debt and recover the monies due to the department, we have since come to the important yet unfortunate decision of issuing notices to the affected municipalities to either pay by 8 December 2017 or face water cuts.
‘It’s inherent upon local government to make sure that in their open process of budgeting they inform the end user where their budget items are and what you are paying for,’ Mokonyane said.
According to the Zululand District Municipality’s 2016/17 Water Services Development Plan: ‘…with a population count of approximately 805 055, the municipality requires at least 2 108 Ml of water per month or 25 295 Ml per year to supply the population with basic water services. This does not account for commercial or industrial requirements’.
Meanwhile Acting Chief Financial Officer of the Water Trading Entity, Paul Nel, said debt from municipalities has been growing for the last seven years.
‘If we look at this financial year, for the first six months it’s grown by R750-million, so we estimate that if nothing gets done its going to grow by R1.5-billion every year. That is money that we should be using elsewhere,’ he said.
At the time of going to press, the Zululand District Municipality had not responded to the ZO for comment.
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