Africa-Press – South-Africa. Despite “some cashflow challenges”, the Maluti-a-Phofung municipality has promised to settle all outstanding salary payments by the last day of the month.
Earlier in the month, there were fears that employees, including political leaders and councillors, would not receive their November salaries.
However, spokesperson Thabo Kessah promised that “about 51% of employees would be paid by midday 24 November”.
“We are hopeful that everybody will be paid by 30 November. We requested our employees and councillors to make arrangements with their banks and service providers about the delay of money into their accounts.
“This issue is happening for the first time under this administration, [but] we do have funds to pay salaries,” he said.
Despite the municipality “experiencing some cashflow challenges”, he said “we do a lot of revenue collection, especially around the middle of the month”.
Kessah added that the municipality also had to struggle with the sheriff of the court after six of their vehicles were attached.
“That process was illegal. He only returned our vehicles after we obtained a court order stating that his actions were unlawful.”
Kessah said the sheriff attached their vehicles following a long-standing transaction with the service provider.
“We reached an agreement to repay the service provider. The municipality owed him about R1.2 million. That debt could not be settled on time due to internal problems. The service provider was later paid, [yet] he continued to attach our property.”
Kessah also bemoaned the reluctance of some citizens to pay for services.
“Some people can afford to pay for services we have rendered. They don’t want to pay.
“Some can’t afford to pay. We have advised those who can’t afford to visit and register for our indigent policy,” Kessah said.
Eskom debt
The municipality owes Eskom around R6.8 billion, but Kessah said the bill was incurred from the previous administration.
“Our officials are currently negotiating with Eskom over this bill. Part of the distribution agreement with Eskom will be how to deal with the settlement. We want electricity consumers to buy electricity directly from Eskom.
“Eskom has a stronger arm of forcing people to pay for electricity. We hope the meeting with Eskom would be fruitful and an agreement to pay the debt would be reached,” he said.
The municipality was snatched from the ANC by its former councillors, who formed MAP16 Civic Movement.
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