The City of Johannesburg is gearing up to switch off the taps of account defaulters as the municipality is owed more R169m by residents.
Aside from the domestic accounts, government departments owe the municipality more than R560m and some of the accounts are older than 90 days.
City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane said the debt had gone up since the figures were tabled at the last council meeting.
During the last council meeting, council resolved to commence with water cuts against repeat offenders.
Johannesburg Water manager Ramoumakwe Seakamela wrote in the council agenda that there had been a decline in water consumption during the last quarter of the 2020/2021 financial year.
“Customers are continuing to default on their current and old debts. The total amount owed by government departments and public entities was R560m, of which R436m refers to debt older than 90 days as of June 2021.
“The entity continues to engage the City of Johannesburg with a view to improve the collection levels,” he said.
Modingoane said the figures referred to the preliminary 2021 fourth quarter results.
“These figures were preliminary results, which excluded various year-end adjustments. The report is submitted much earlier due to time constraints and excludes some information not finalised.
“The item presented relates to early results in June. The amount owed by government departments went up from R560m in May 2021 to R605m in August 2021.
“The entity has started with increased disconnection on arrear government accounts. It should be noted that disconnection is part of our standard credit control process,” Modingoane said.
On domestic accounts, he said that arrears had increased and this was largely attributed to lower payment levels.
In his report to council, Johannesburg Water MD Ntshavheni Mukwevho said the recurring theft and vandalism of water infrastructure, especially brass water meters, hampered the entity’s ability to deliver services and challenged the infrastructure improvement programme.
“Water meters are being stolen and this creates frequent water interruptions, which negatively affect customers.
“There has been a noticeable increase in vandalism of hydrants by vagrants, illegal car washes and homeless people with the intention to access water.
“This is especially happening in the CBD areas,” Mukwevho wrote.
Just this week, residents across Gauteng municipalities will be affected by Rand Water’s planned 54-hour shutdown from 5am on Monday.
The shutdown has been planned since 2019 and is a maintenance measure undertaken to add a new pipe to the system that will not only increase the amount of water that can be drawn from the river into the treatment plant, but will increase the volume of the old pipes that supply municipalities and provide extra flexibility in future when shutdowns are needed.
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