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The City of Tshwane has collected about R300 million since it started its campaign last week to disconnect electricity and water from more than 600 businesses and government departments for defaulting on their electricity, water and property rates bills.
Defaulters included the police headquarters’ building that owed R5.1 million, Pretoria News offices owing R1 million for unpaid electricity, the Gautrain offices that allegedly owed R10 million, and a shopping centre in Sinoville which owed R13 million for electricity and R3 million for water.
City Press has learnt that Pretoria News paid R650 000 on Monday and so avoided being cut off. Gautrain has, however, disputed the debt and has threatened to go to court to force the city to reinstate water and electricity that has been disconnected.
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In total, customers owed the city R17 billion. A breakdown of the figure includes R1.3 billion owed by government departments and embassies, R4 billion by businesses and R8 billion by residential customers.
Eleven deployed teams have been combing the city since last week to disconnect defaulting customers.
Tshwane metro spokesperson, Selby Bokaba, said that the metro would continue with the campaign until the end of the financial year and then continue with it probably for one week once a month. Next in line, he said, were township businesses and residential complexes.
“We’ve been too lenient and trusting that people will do what is right. When that was not happening, we decided to try other means. It’s a painful thing to do, but if we don’t do this, the municipality might as well close shop. We are the capital city of South Africa, and we host the highest number of embassies after Washington DC.” He added:
Bokaba said that, once the metro had reduced the debtors’ book, it would be able to build substations, reservoirs and roads, and maintain them. There had been enthusiasm from customers to pay after the metro had begun with the campaign.
Some businesses were found to have bridged electricity. The metro fines a business R621 000 for stealing electricity and a household R21 000.
“We do write letters to people, serve them notices, but they just don’t give a hoot,” he said.
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