Grahamstown residents have been using an excessive amount of water which is costing the municipality millions of rands. The Makana council had to write off a services debt in arrears of over R20-million incurred by poor residents, reports the municipality.
Grahamstown residents have been using an excessive amount of water which is costing the municipality millions of rands. The Makana council had to write off a services debt in arrears of over R20-million incurred by poor residents, reports the municipality.
During a special meeting last Friday the council approved that R5 822 201.71 in debt arrears for 100% indigent households should be written off and R14 192 211.37 for 75% indigent households. While Makana spokesperson Thandy Matebese says the council is justified in writing off debts for indigent households by the "provision for bad debts" all records relating to the debt will be safely kept by the municipality’s chief financial officer (CFO) Jackson Ngcelwane for auditing purposes. This means that this provision is taken into consideration when planning the annual capital budget.
Ngcelwane singles out "excessive water consumption as the main contributor" to the rates and services debt. Poor households are entitled to 10Kl of water per month, but most of these households are consuming more than this per month and are failing to pay their accounts. "A lot of education needs to happen in this regard, perhaps through utilisation of ward committee members and the newly-appointed indigent clerks," he suggested.
At least once during a financial year the CFO is supposed to evaluate the status of debts in arrears belonging to poor households. The last time that such an exercise was carried out was towards the end of the 2007/2008 financial year where an amount of R27-million was written off for households with no income whatsoever. During this time the 75% poor households were not included as their category did not exist at the time. The total debt (which has been in arrears for longer than 120 days) owed by all residents was R119-million, as at 31 August 2009. The grand total of debt owed to the municipality is R2 740 284 with provincial government departments contributing almost R10-million to the debt. National departments account for more than R2.7-million of the debt and the municipality is threatening to switch all departments which are defaulting in payment from this week.
Prior to writing off any debt, the municipality’s indigent policy provides for the matter to be tabled in front of the council for approval. Tabling the matter to the councillors on Friday, Makana Municipal Manager Ntombi Baart said:"It must also be indicated that this item was meant to be discussed at the BTI [Budget, Treasury and IDP] portfolio committee meeting of October 2009, however, due to the fact that the meeting didn’t meet the quorum required the item was not discussed."
Last month Grocott’s Mail reported that the meeting was eventually cancelled after being rescheduled twice. The majority of the committee members had not attended.
