Pretoria – The City of Tshwane is once again in financial trouble with Eskom as it continues to fail to settle the R1.6 billion bill which was payable last month.
Eskom said the City of Tshwane had failed to honour its August invoice of R1.6bn, paying only R492 million of the bill which was due and payable on 16 September, 2022.
Eskom said it had a meeting with the municipality on Friday and it had rejected the municipality’s proposed payment arrangement.
“The power utility advised the municipality to settle the balance of R1.1bn by close of business on Friday, 30 September 2022,” Eskom said in a statement.
In August, Eskom threatened to disconnect power supply to the City for failing to settle its debt of R1.6bn debt. After the threat, the municipality paid R185m on September 16, which was the last payment made.
“The municipality’s erratic payment pattern is in breach of the electricity supply agreement it holds with Eskom, and it has devastating impact on the power utility’s cash flow. The City’s partial payment of its account exposes Eskom to serious financial risk and its ability to supply electricity to customers due to under recovery,” Eskom said.
The power utility said it would continue to implement different methods to recover money owed to it and it has approached National Treasury to facilitate the dispute.
In an attempt to solve it’s financial woes, early this month, the Tshwane municipality appointed former Nelson Mandela Bay city manager, Johann Mettler, as the new city manager of the metro.
Tshwane mayor Randall Williams said: “The City of Tshwane is experiencing financial challenges. We also have service delivery issues and we believe that with his experience, we can turn the city around financially.”
Attempts to get hold of the City spokesperson, Selby Bokaba, were unsuccessful on Friday.
IOL