Opposition parties in the North West’s troubled Matlosana local municipality are concerned about Eskom’s threat to attach its bank account.
This after the Gauteng High Court granted Eskom a relief order to attach the municipality’s account, to recoup R1.5 billion, a debt that has been accumulating since 2020.
Lerato Mathopa of the Patriotic Alliance said Matlosana Municipality is not the only municipality in South Africa facing this crisis because of ANC corruption.
“It’s a problem replicating itself in several parts of the country as a result of mismanagement, maladministration, and corruption of the ANC,” she said.
Mathopa said the North West provincial government must save the municipality from its imminent total collapse.
“This will be disastrous for Matlosana residents . We can no longer fold our arms and watch as our cities and the country are being run down by the ANC,” she said.
The EFF accused the municipality of misleading the council about paying Eskom after the council resolved that the Municipal Manager and the Chief Financial Officer must continuously engage Eskom to make sure that they remedy the situation.
“In our last council meeting the mayor pronounced that they have already started paying Eskom to reduce the money that they were owing to Eskom, so this comes in as a surprise and we still need to go and investigate,” EFF’s Banele Faku said.
Johannes Le Grange from the Democratic Alliance said the party advised the municipality to develop an Eskom payment plan.
“The Municipality failed to apply this decision; they also failed to lodge another petition to another court with the possibility that another court could come to a different decision. The DA warned them for almost two years.
“The basics are we are collecting only R120 million a month but we are invoicing R260 million, so there is not enough money to pay the salaries, the contractors, Eskom and Midvaal water company,” he said.
The DA lost its bid three weeks ago for a vote of no confidence against the mayor James Tsolela and blamed the ANC councillors for backing him.
Tsolela too said he was shocked by Eskom’s decision given that the town has been making payments to the power utility since January.
“For the past month now we have been engaging with Eskom in order to try and come up with an amicable solution. Since January the current account of Eskom has been paid in full, so we have honoured the promise,” he said.
However, Eskom dismissed the municipality’s claim that it has been paying since January.
Eskoms’s Provincial Customer Relations Manager Ezekiel Baruti said there was no debt payment or reduction agreement with the municipality.
“On December 8th, 2020, the Gauteng High Court ordered the Matlosana Local Municipality to pay Eskom R8 million per month for the next 48 months so there was no agreement,” he said.
