Administrators tasked with turning around Emfuleni local municipality say they are winning in addressing financial problems and service delivery issues which have plagued the council for the past few years.
On Tuesday, lead administrator Gilberto Martins was joined by Lesedi Mere, who is responsible for supply chain, Silas Zimu, heading basic services, and Rianda Kruger in explaining the progress during a panel discussion orgainsed by Gauteng provincial government.
The administrators said while there is still a lot of work to be done to turn around the municipality, progress has been made in bringing back basic services.
“We are winning. If you consider the main roads that are driving the economy of Emfuleni, bringing goods and services in and out, about 21 of those are done. You can even drive your Ferrari there. We will be starting another 42 roads. Soon on the roads we will tick that they are all done," said Zimu
“If you look at the number of power outages that the residents used to have, that has been reduced. You used to have a whole suburb without electricity for 32 days, those [days] are not yet gone but we’re talking less of such. You get in a street, there’s two houses that are off, probably a [circuit] breaker, then you send a person. Resevoirs that had no water in Vanderbijpark, today those are full of water.”
However, Zimu conceded that the sewer “is still a big problem” and said the team is working with the department of water and sanitation to solve the problem.
Zimu said the team has started work to introduce smart metering systems for electricity, which will enable the user to monitor consumption while another protected device remains outside the home for the municipality to read. The municiapility has a collection rate just about 70% as people have by-passed their meters and even those who want to pay, dispute the municipality
“We've also gone to Eskom to say that they have good engineers, can they come and help us reduce our power outages. Those agreements are coming into play,” Zimu said.
Martins and his team started their work in the second half of 2020 after previous interventions which dated back to June 2018 had not yielded desired results for the Gauteng provincial government.
Emfuleni has been plagued by service delivery problems over the past few years. The Sowetan reported in February about the suffering of the residents and businesses who lived without any refuse collection, constant power outages and potholes which had become a permanent feature in the municipality.
This was caused by the debt the municipality owed service providers. The municipality owes Eskom R3.2bn and Rand Water R1.3bn. About R250m is owed to different small service providers.
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