The financially struggling Mooi Mpofana Local Municipality, on the north-west of KwaZulu-Natal, has established a special team to collect revenue in its attempt to deal with the spiralling Eskom debt.
With only a R209 million budget, the tiny municipality owes Eskom R400 million. This means the municipality has a negative budget which forces the provincial government to continue keeping it under administration.
The provincial Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department has recently appointed an administrator to assist the municipality in shaping its finances, however, mayor Maureen Magubane said she and her council are trying hard to turn things around by improving the revenue collection to reduce debt.
She said as part of the plan to turn the financial status of the municipality, a team has been established to focus on revenue collection from business and residential property rates.
Also as part of the plan, the municipality has successfully ended the 99-year-lease of the residential property in Bruntville township, where more than 5 000 households had no ownership of the houses they had lived in for many years.
The mayor urged the residents to come and collect their title deeds at the municipality offices. She described the move as a positive step in bringing dignity to the residents who have been tenants in the houses they were supposed to have been owning.
“My administration is trying hard to deal with the problems we inherited when we came in 2021. Our focus is the spiralling Eskom debt so we want to appeal to residents to pay for the electricity and rates so that we improve services and also pay the Eskom debt, which continues to grow,” said Magubane.
Mooi Mpofana is a small municipality along the N3 highway near Mooi River toll plaza. It has only 10 councillors and its population is mainly from the small township of Bruntville and farming communities living and working in the dairy farms as well as three wards under the traditional leadership, which is mostly affected by the Eskom issue.
The ANC-run municipality has been under administration since 2016 because of administrative blunders, which led to it owing millions of rand to Eskom.
In the 10-council municipality, ANC has seven councillors while the DA, the IFP, and the EFF have one each.