Within four hours on Wednesday, the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) managed to collect over R6m of the R38bn that it's owed for unpaid rates and taxes.
Several businesses in Sandton had to fork out millions of rand in a last-minute ditch to settle their municipal bills to avoid their water services being disconnected.
Taking a leaf out of the City of Tshwane's book, who started a similar campaign last week, CoJ officials, lead by the city's head of revenue Lufuno Mashau, descended on nonpaying businesses in Sandton around 9am.
Mashau said the biggest debt belonged to Sandton City — which owed R168m in water and rates.
One of the businesses visited included Ensemble Hotel Holdings, an entity that houses Radisson Blu Hotel. Ensemble Hotel allegedly owed over R14m in water and other services. The entity was able to pay R3m within two hours after having its water metre disconnected.
“Radisson Blu Hotel Sandton has been made aware of the water bill in arrears for the block in which it operates on. This matter has been resolved between the two parties involved, the complex landlord [Ensemble Hotel Holdings] and the municipality. Radisson Blu Hotel Sandton confirms that the hotel continues to be fully operational. The safety and satisfaction of our guests and staff remain our constant priority,” said general manager Shaun Wheeler.
Sandown Village Office Park, which houses legal firms, also had its water disconnected around 11am for owing R927,792 in water and rates. Two hours later, the office park had its water reconnected after paying R462,000 of its water bill.
SALA Pension Fund, a financial institution, was in the red by R7,4m in water and rates, avoided disconnection as the facility paid R3m when the officials arrived at its premises.
Mashau said the city had issued pre-termination notices in December to all non-paying customers.
“You can see that some of these businesses are really sitting with money while the municipality suffers. We have to intensify these cut-offs. We are not only targeting Sandton. We will continue to go to other places and cut off customers that owe us,” said Mashau.
“We are owed a total of R38bn. We need to be paid as a metropolitan municipality so that we can continue rendering services to people in the city. If people do not pay it generally affects them. If a pothole needs to be fixed, the city must spend money to fix that pothole in your area...We buy water and electricity from rand Water and Eskom, so we need to pay for those services,” said Mashau.
SALA legal adviser Malesela Molefe said they were not aware of the debt.
“This property was managed by a property agent. We are the owners of the building but there was a property agent who ran the building. We received a letter from the city about this huge water bill we are owing. We did not know anything about it. We will continue engaging the city so that we can establish where the problem arose,” said Molefe.
Earlier during the day, City Power ran a similar operation where it disconnected electricity from places that did not settle their electricity bill.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the power utility is owed R7bn for electricity, mostly by malls and factories in the city.
Mangena said their operation cut off power at four residential complexes in Bryanston.
“One of the places we disconnected owed R421,000 for electricity. We are to continue with the operation on Thursday [today],” said Mangena.
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