Pretoria - The City of Tshwane’s financial troubles with Eskom continue, after the municipality failed, again, to settle its account.
Eskom said last week it had sought intervention from the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs in the debt repayment matter between the power utility and the municipality.
“The City of Tshwane failed to settle its account despite numerous engagements with the municipality. Tshwane’s bill as at November 30 was R1.6 billion after it failed to pay the September bill of R887 million… and its arrears of R699 million. The October bill of R894bn… also remains unpaid,” Eskom said.
Eskom said the Public Finance Management Act required it recovered what was owed to it.
“It is for this reason that Eskom sought the intervention of the department in this matter. The overdue debt has contributed negatively to the liquidity, financial performance and sustainability of the organisation where Eskom has to borrow to meet its financial obligations,” the power utility said.
City’s finance MMC Peter Sutton yesterday told the Pretoria News Eskom’s move to approach the department didn’t come as a surprise because it had been something they’d been threatening to do for sometime.
“It is obviously in their prerogative to do that and they must proceed,” he said.
He said the City would wait for the finalisation of the investigation by Cogta to hear the outcome.
“We have been putting our payment plans to them and I think the problem has been that we are not settling outstanding amount immediately in full. But we have been communicating payment plans to them and we have been keeping to them,” Sutton said.
Last week mayor Randall Williams alluded to the fact that the City’s financial woes with Eskom could be attributed to a number of factors such as municipal salary bill that increased from R700m per month to about R1.2bn per month because of a benchmarking exercise.
Salaries, he said, constituted 50% of the operating budget.
Another factor affecting the city’s cash flow liquidity was a problem with revenue collection during the period when the city was placed under administration.
Revenue collection also dropped during Covid-19 because many people didn’t receive their regular incomes.
Williams said the City had to pay a salary of R2bn for the month of November due to the 13th cheque for workers. “We gave the payment plan to Eskom that the September bill we will now pay off on December 10, the October bill paid off by the end of December and the November bill (we will) pay off by the middle January,” he said.
Pretoria News