The Laudium Atteridgeville Saulsville Civics Association (Lasca) has accused City of Tshwane MMC for Finance Jacqui Uys of running municipal affairs through social media and neglecting to interact with communities in person.
This comes after Uys announced on social media that a municipal finance outreach programme has assisted 6 206 residents with municipal account queries and services in townships and suburban areas across Tshwane between February and July this year.
“Of these, 1 811 indigent support applications, the City's free basket of services for the poor, and 3 537 billing queries were resolved,” she said.
But, Lasca chairperson, Tshepo Mahlangu, said Uys refused to attend community meetings and opted to employ the outreach programme “to trick residents into making arrangements to avoid electricity cut-offs”.
He said: “We demand a response to genuine concerns raised through a memorandum of demands which was handed to the City of Tshwane recently. MMC Jacqui Uys and her toxic coalition government must refrain from running the City through social media, because not all of us are coconuts.”
The accusation was despite Uys’s assertion that the finance outreach programme was supported at six public meetings held to address issues related to the Tshwane Ya Tima revenue-collection campaign.
During the meetings, she said, communities engaged her directly along with municipal finance officials and were “assisted to resolve many challenges and concerns”.
Uys said the outreach programme followed the successful relaunch of the City’s Tshwane Ya Tima drive in February this year.
“The campaign started as a disconnection drive focusing on those who drive up high utility bills without paying. However, the campaign was subsequently moved to focus on all debtors to maximise revenue collection,”she said.
She said the revenue-collection campaign was more than just a punitive drive on defaulters but a real collaboration between residents, businesses and the City.
“The aim is to work together to ensure correct billing and to help residents take control of their municipal accounts. This led to the establishment of a mobile outreach programme going into communities to assist with account queries, late estate registration, indigent applications, affordability write-off applications and payment arrangements,” she said.
Mahlangu said Tshwane Ya Tima was “illegal” because it was based on the wrong debtors’ book with estimated municipal bills.
“I hope their so-called coalition partners will come to their senses and scrap all estimated arrears, because what they are doing now is that they are gloating about mismanagement, corruption and arrogance,” he said.
Pretoria News
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