The Democratic Alliance (DA) will ask its Members of the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature (MPLs) to petition MEC of CoGTA, Mandla Msibi, to place under provincial administration (Section 139 of the Municipal Financial Management Act) 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 an lack of sound financial management.
For years, many of the province’s 21 municipalities have been reprimanded for lacking sound financial management and some have been facing violent service delivery protests and threats to cut services.
Currently, Lekwa local municipality in Standerton owes the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) R287 million for water provision and the DWS transferred the municipality to debt collectors.
During the current financial year, the municipality has lost 83% of the water it has purchased to leaks and illegal connections. This is money that could have gone towards the delivery of services, especially when it comes to water provision. This municipality is synonymous for water supply shortages due to dilapidated infrastructure.
Govan Mbeki municipality in Secunda owes Rand Water R246 million. This has led to water restrictions on numerous occasions causing many people in the areas of Leandra, Kinross, Embalenhle, and Bethal to go without water for days and weeks on end. The municipality also lost 29.62% of the water it purchased.
Mpumalanga’s capital, the City of Mbombela municipality, owes the Department of Water and Sanitation R140 million and they lost 25.2% of the water they purchased within the last financial year
Victor Khanye local municipality in Delmas is another of the municipalities in the province to have been throttled by Rand Water, affecting the delivery of water to the higher lying areas. As of the end of January the municipality owed the entity R144 million, an amount that has been increasing since 2019.
Emalahleni local municipality owes the following entities for water provision and for the following amounts as at the end of March 2020:
- Department of Water and Sanitation- R172 million
- Anglo Operations- R32 million
- Glencore-R8.9 million
- Nuwater South Africa- R3.2 million
Another concern with Emalahleni 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.
It is evident that a change of political leadership in all municipalities in Mpumalanga is needed very soon for our people to enjoy proper service delivery like in the DA-led municipality of Midvaal and the Western Cape Province.
The DA will also call for the ring-fencing of rate payers’ monthly water and electricity bills to be paid directly to the relevant service providers and not directly to the municipalities.