Durban - The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) says it strives to stay up to date with its payments to municipalities who provide services to government buildings.
The issue of the Public Works department paying accounts has come under scrutiny in the Msunduzi Municipality in Pietermaritzburg where some government departments have been disconnected due to their accounts being in arrears.
In a lengthy statement issued on Thursday in which the department did not mention any municipality by name, it said as at July 31, 2022, it had engaged municipalities which resulted in verification and confirmed amount of R 83.3 million being owed to municipalities for municipal services rendered and property rates.
The department said it is waiting for municipalities to provide invoices, and payments would be processed as soon as invoices were received.
It said in addition, an amount of R170.1m as at July 31, 2022 is under investigation as the department is in the process of performing reconciliation with the municipalities to ensure correct payments.
It said an amount of just over R324.5m is also in dispute in terms of property rates and taxes.
There is also an amount of around R67.2m that has been billed as an annual invoice which the department pays on a monthly basis.
The department said just over R12m was also incorrectly billed.
“To address the disputes under the R12 million amount, the DPWI is engaging municipalities to waive the interest linked to properties of other custodians and advising municipalities to direct the invoices to the rightful owners for future payments,” it said.
The department said it was taking the following actions to address the disputes:
- Requesting the municipalities to waive the uncorroborated interest;
- Verifying ownership/custodianship of the properties submitted (in some of these cases, the land on which DPWI properties are situated does not belong to the DPWI and therefore poses a challenge when invoices are received since billing is not based on the footprint of the DPWI property but the entire extent of the land parcel.
It added that it has made payments across all 257 municipalities for municipal services and property rates to the value of R1.26 billion from April 2022 to July 2022.
“The total amount paid for municipal services and property rates to all municipalities during the month of July 2022 amounts to R228 million,” it said.