Pay your water bills, debtors warned

Departments, councils owe billions; new threat of cut-offs and restrictions

WATER and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane has urged departments that owe municipalities billions of rand for services to settle their debt. This would allow some of the municipalities who owe her department R10.7 billion to pay the outstanding amount.

The National Treasury said departments, households and businesses owe municipalities more than R128bn. Households owe municipalities R83bn; businesses owe R27bn and departments R7bn.

Mokonyane said yesterday they need the money owed to her department and debt owed to water boards by municipalities.

Despite making arrangements with most of the 30 municipalities to settle the debt, all municipalities should come on board, she said.

If departments that owed municipalities settled their debts these municipalities would in turn be able to pay her department and water boards, she said.

Mokonyane said there was a huge backlog in the maintenance of water infrastructure. Municipalities should set aside 8% of their budget to fix the infrastructure, but this does not happen, Mokonyane said. They were appealing to departments who owed municipalities to start paying.

“Government departments must pay municipalities… Municipalities must bill the departments,” she said.

Mokonyane said some departments were in the security cluster and they should start paying municipalities.

If this was done the Department of Water and Sanitation would not be owed R10.7bn and municipalities would not be owed R7bn by departments.

She said this must be a national decision after discussions.

National Treasury told Parliament last month municipalities also owed Eskom R16bn. Eskom has been struggling for months to get municipalities to pay. This led to electricity cuts in some of the municipalities in the country.

Municipalities get an equitable share of R110bn but have complained this was not enough to address problems. She said municipalities cannot fix their water infrastructure despite a huge backlog. Annual reports and integrated development plans state that municipalities must set aside 8% of their budgets to fix the infrastructure.

Despite payments of more than R250m by some of the defaulting municipalities, the debt needed to be settled by last Friday.

Payment plans have been entered into with 25 of the 30 defaulting municipalities.

Since the deadline of last Friday was announced for municipalities to pay, 11 paid R213m to the water boards and R55.5m to her department, she said.

She threatened that municipalities refusing to pay faced cut-offs. Soon there will be water restrictions to those failing to respond to notices or making payment plans, she said.