When the cash-strapped Lekwa local municipality in Mpumalanga was put under administration recently, it was on the brink of collapse and imposed its own localised electricity outages known as “Lekwa shedding”.
This is load-shedding outside that of power utility Eskom, which supplies them with power.
It is on a rotational basis of about two to three hours at a time between neighbourhoods in townships, suburbs and the Standerton CBD.
The council started it a few months ago in a bid to avoid total blackouts as it owes Eskom R1.3bn.
0 of 4
Lekwa, which has 250,000 residents, has notified maximum demand (NMD) of 55mva with Eskom but has been breaching the 67mva mark for years due to illegal connections which add more pressure to the grid, resulting in throttled supply.
The council was put under administration in April as it could no longer deliver basic services after years of poor administration.
In February, a group calling itself Surviving Lekwa roped in two law firms to help with a class-action suit against the council.
The community also complained about the quality of roads and sewerage spillages.
In April, chicken company Astra Foods won a court order over lack of service delivery, which forced the national government and the Treasury to prepare a financial recovery plan for the municipality. The firm’s produce had been affected by the unstable electricity and water supply.
Finance minister Tito Mboweni appointed former Nelson Mandela Bay metro council manager Johann Mettler as an administrator to stabilise the municipality’s financial affairs, address service delivery problems and reduce unnecessary expenditure over a period of 12 months.
“This is my second week in this town and already people expect me to perform miracles when the municipality is being owed R1bn in uncollected revenue,” Mettler told Sowetan on Thursday.
“We owed Eskom R1.3bn, we owe the SA Revenue Service R98m and R288m to the department of water & sanitation. As I’m talking with you right now, my house and office don’t have lights and water. The inlet pipe, which is over 40 years old, burst on Monday due to poor maintenance and there is a fault with the feeder line which has interrupted the town’s electricity supply,” said Mettler.
He said his priority was stabilising council finances by collecting debt and reducing the amount owed to Eskom.
He said issues like roads will have to take the back seat for now.
“One of the biggest [challenges] is the collection of budget, which they set at 75% but could only get less than 68%. I have never heard of a municipality collecting so low. A normal working municipality collects about 90%.
“Also they [the municipality] have been paying more to get electricity from Eskom and then sell it very cheap to consumers. That is poor business management and maladministration. In the last draft budget earlier this year, council proposed a tariff increase of 5.2% while Eskom was negotiating a 15% increase with Nersa (National Energy Regulator of SA)... It doesn’t make any sense,” said Mettler.
He said his plan is to stabilise the council's finances in the next three months.
Though the DA in the area welcomed Mboweni’s interventions, the party said Mettler needed to also prioritise infrastructure and sewerage.
“There is not a single issue that can take a back seat in Lekwa. Mettler can’t just collect revenue when we aren’t receiving services right now. All these things go hand-in-hand. He is busy with the IDP (integrated development plan) when we don’t have water at the moment.
“He needs to gets his act together,” said DA councillor Sithi Silosini.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.