Municipality cuts schools’ power, water to address debt

THE Msunduzi Municipality is cracking down on debt defaulters by disconnecting their water and electricity supply. A number of schools are affected.

About 10 Section 21 schools (which are capable of managing their own funds) owe the municipality close to R20 million for water.

The municipality disconnected water supply to Georgetown High School in Edendale last month and by yesterday it had still not been restored.

“The school owes us about R2m. They last paid in July 2018. All this time, we’ve been hoping that they would come forward and engage the municipality in the payment of this debt, but they have not done so,” said Msunduzi mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla.

He said this was not the first time the school had defaulted.

“We disconnected them in December because we did not want this to affect the pupils. At that time, the pupils were no longer at school, but the teachers were there.

“We had hoped they would make an arrangement before the school reopened, but that has not been the case. We want to make it clear that we do not want to interfere with education in school, we value education,” Thebolla said.

He said there were engagements with Education MEC Kwazi Mshengu who informed him that he (Mshengu) would be attending to the matter and there was a possibility that the water supply would be reconnected by today.

Thebolla said the municipality would disconnect all the schools that were not paying.

“We disconnected supply to another school. It came and made arrangements, but is defaulting again.”

Thebolla said they were owed about R200m by all government departments and the municipality would look at similar strict steps against all defaulters.

“The municipality is always in the news for bad reasons. We are saying that we have obligations that we have to honour. We have services that we need to deliver to all the community.

“We recently held a meeting where we had to reduce our budget and we are looking at things that we can and cannot do. This situation can’t continue like this.

“The culture of non-payment is very detrimental to the city and our ability to deliver services to the community,” he said.

Thebolla warned that similar action was to be taken against residents.

“We understand that the economic situation is not good, but it cannot be that there are people who can pay for their DStv account every month without fail and yet claim they cannot pay their municipal water and light accounts.”

The Department of Education was still investigating the matter yesterday and was not in a position to respond.

Provincial government spokesperson Lennox Mabaso said the issue of revenue enhancement and financial viability of municipalities was a priority for the government and all people who owed municipalities should pay.

He said there were several platforms established by the Premier’s Office and the provincial treasury that allowed municipalities to address issues of non-payment.

“These matter could be addressed in a day,” he said.

He said the municipalities should also have their billing records in order so they were not questioned.