The Nelson Mandela Bay directorates of Infrastructure and Engineering as well as Electricity are under the purview of two EFF Councillors: MMC Khaya Ngqisha and MMC Zanele Sikawuti.
The EFF forms part of the current coalition government in Nelson Mandela Bay and these two young Councillors have bagged prime MMC positions which command serious budgets and access to big business in the city.
The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality recently announced that they would be targetting business for consistent non-payment behaviour in order to fill a growing gap in revenue collection.
Now the capitalist in me says that it is admirable that revenue collection is receiving attention BUT, the empath in me questions why only one section of revenue paying customers are being targetted? AND the capitalist in me says that the municipality is seriously erring by also not growing their revenue base with more development, connections and attracting investments with large numbers of jobs.
Of course I may be totally unfair here in saying that this selective targetting of a specific section of clients feeds into the EFF narrative of nationalisation and social enslavery of citizens via grants in aid.
See the YouTube video of the announcement below:
According to Ngqisha; “We have mainly focused on business because that is the debt that is stressing us as a municipality the most and we view this as a sabotage if a business continues not to pay and yet they continue to make great profits within our Nelson Mandela Bay municipality.”
Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber CEO Denise van Huyssteen said; “It is critical that businesses, residents and other ratepayers pay their bills and as such we urge the municipality to step up efforts to recover any amounts owed through payment arrangements and other measures. Should there be instances of innacurate billing or readings these need to be addressed as well. We remain committed to maintaining open communication channels with the municipality and collaborating to service the best interest of Nelson Mandela Bay and to save much needed jobs.”
Ngqisha said; “You must understand that the EFF is now in charge of these service delivery directorates and where we are involved we are going to ensure that things happen by the book. As we said we are not interested in whether your business status is ‘what-what’, if you got links to who when we get there, we just want our money so that we can bring services to our people.”
On the question of water Ngqisha said; “If companies who are capitalist think that they are going to continue as per normal and have a huge debt whilst not paying for their services we are going to take very serious action. We are not afraid to cut off water supply if needs be. We are going to cut it because that service is not for free. That water comes from our reticulation system and if needs be what we will do is we will provide 5l water bottles to those businesses so that they will be able to feel the pinch.”
Business have been given 7 days to make arrangements with the municpality to “avoid shutdown of water and electricity”.
In most municipal jurisdictions business consumers are not afforded any free water because they don’t enjoy the same constitutional rights (of access to water) that natural persons (individuals) do.
Where the municipality does not provide business consumers with any free water, it is lawful for a municipality to terminate the supply of water to a commercial property entirely for non-payment of outstanding municipal debt, provided that the municipality has followed all of the relevant laws relating to giving of notification of the disconnection, and the resolution of any dispute in relation to the amount outstanding on the account, before the disconnection takes place.
The reaction on Twitter could be encapsualted in this one tweet by @MakhanyaPBR:
Businesses of @MyPE there’s new boss in town it’s called @EFF_N_Mandela @Official_EFF_EC it’s not your friend called the ANC, it’s the EFF,you gna start paying bcz Water and sanitation and Energy is our babe nizozwa ngathi niyabizwa ,we incharge #RegisterToVoteEFF #2024IsOur1994
Alan Straton
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