Pretoria - After being attacked in recent months for struggling to pay its Eskom bills of a monthly R1.6 billion, the City of Tshwane believes its financial situation was on the mend.
The good news, according to the municipality, was that its financial books showed that its monthly revenue-collection had jumped from an average of R2.5bn earlier this year to R3.5bn in September.
The recent financial recovery augured well for the metro's debt settlements in future, according to MMC for Finance, Peter Sutton.
Sutton attributed the gradual improvements of City's finances to its confrontational and controversial revenue-collection campaign called #TshwaneYaTima, loosely translated as the City of Tshwane switches off.
Through the campaign the City officials, accompanied by the Tshwane Metro Police Department officers would knock on the doors of households and businesses of defaulting customers to switch off their electricity supply.
“Over the last few months, the City of Tshwane has seen a gradual increase in our revenue-collection levels. This means more residents, businesses and other clients are starting to heed the call to pay for services rendered,” Sutton said.
His comment comes on the back of criticisms this week by the regional ANC in Tshwane, which believed the municipality was in a financial crisis.
The party foresaw a situation whereby the city won't be able to pay workers' salaries at the end of November.
The city is expected to pay out annual bonuses to employees in November, including their monthly salaries.
Sutton has hit out at the ANC, saying the government of coalition partners in Tshwane has never paid employees late and has no intention to do so in future.
Earlier in the calendar year, he said, the City’s monthly revenue collection was averaging R2,5 bn which negatively affected its cashflow and liquidity.
“To turn things around, the City implemented several interventions. including our aggressive revenue-collection campaign which sought to disconnect services to defaulting clients who run up high service bills and fail to pay the City.
“The interventions, which include implementing cost-cutting measures, reducing the appointment of consultants and limiting recruitment to only critical vacancies, are proving to be effective with revenue collections improving slightly in the last four months,” Sutton said.
From June, he said, the metro has seen an average of more than R3bn collected monthly, with a record collection rate of R3,5bn in September 2022.
“We are firm in our stance that the financial stability of the City is critical and that every effort must be made to restore the City to a financially healthy position,” he said.
He, however, said the city was not yet out of the woods despite improvement in revenue collection.
“Our monthly revenue-collection target for the current financial year is R4 billion. Meeting this target will enable the City to gather enough cash resources to pay service providers like Eskom on time,”he said.
He pointed out that the challenges faced by the city with Eskom payments would continue in the short- to medium-term “as we work to holistically improve the City’s finances”
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