By Trudie Grove-Morgan MPL – DA Spokesperson on CoGTA
Debt collection strategies by Mpumalanga ANC-led municipalities is failing dismally because of cadre deployment, corruption and a lack of skills, hence they are owed over R12 billion by consumers, including provincial government departments.
While responding to Democratic Alliance (DA) questions in the Provincial Legislature recently, Premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane said “by December 2018, consumers (including government departments’) owed local municipalities R12.6 billion for services rendered. Households were responsible for 58.6% of the money owed to municipalities.”
This is a clear indication that the ANC-led municipalities (all 21) in the province are failing to generate revenue from debt collection for services rendered – because of corruption, cadre deployment and lack of skills.
The failure to implement revenue improvement plans resulted in Lekwa and Dipaleseng local municipalities collecting less than 60% revenue which would be needed to function and distribute services. Lekwa collected 45% whilst Dipaleseng collected 32% revenue in the last financial year.
The failure to generate and collect revenue further affects residents and municipal workers in that there is no operating expenditure for services and for salaries.
In addition, the failure to generate an income by municipalities further resulted in R5 billion being owed to entities such as Eskom. Mpumalanga municipalities’ Eskom debt escalated from R773 million in 2016 to R5 billion in 2018.
Under the ANC, Mpumalanga municipalities have been plagued by a billing and revenue collection crises for several years, which have led to billions of rands worth of lost or written-off revenue.
The people of Mpumalanga have a choice to vote for corruption or vote the DA in the 2021 local government elections. We will conduct skills audit for of all civil servants to ensure that only qualified and ethical people are in a position to proper collect and account for revenue collection. We need ethical people in our municipalities to deal with people’s resources.
For example, ever since the DA took over the Tshwane Metro, revenue collection rate has increased to 93.7%, the best financial position the Metro has been in over 7 years.