The DA in Govan Mbeki will engage and send questions to the Executive Mayor, Nhlakanipho Zuma, after it was revealed at a Council meeting that was held on the 25th of April 2024, that the National Treasury was planning to withdraw Govan Mbeki’s approval for debt relief, because the municipality struggled to keep up with the current account.
Granted in August 2023, the DA discovered that the municipality only managed to meet 63% of the conditions that are set out in National Treasury’s debt relief programme between August 2023 and October 2024.
The National Treasury even went as far as to say that because of this persistent inability to service their monthly Eskom debt, the municipality incurred a further R1 045 billion that was added to the debt.
Since 2018, this municipality has struggled with various avenues of debt control and poor revenue generation strategies which hindered the repayment of creditors. To date, the municipality is owed R3 775 billion for the services that have been rendered. This persistent inability to generate revenue caused the Eskom debt to skyrocket to R5 439 billion in the space of just a couple of years.
In addition to the above, the municipality lost 64% of their electricity during the 2022/23 financial year. Since 2018, the DA has been calling on this municipality to clamp down on electricity distribution losses and improve revenue generation, to no avail.
The National Treasury further submitted a letter to the municipality on the 16th of December 2024, notifying the municipality of their intent to withdraw the municipality from the debt relief programme on 31 January 2025.
The DA in Govan Mbeki will continue to hold the municipality to account after the National Treasury suggested that the municipality must consider an intervention from the national or provincial government to address these financial difficulties.