The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Executive Mayor Garry van Nierkerk is grabbing the bull by its horns by taking up responsibility to lead a multi-task Team that continues to disconnect ratepayers who have consistently failed to pay for Municipality services like electricity, water, and property rates.
The Revenue Enhancement Task Team as it is known, will now be led from the front every Thursdays, by the Executive Mayor.
Today, 9 May 2024, through this task team the Executive Mayor re-launched an aggressive revenue enhancement programme where several residential and business properties were disconnected from municipal services.
The areas visited were, Summerstrand, Central Hill, and North-end residential areas. Business areas visited for the cut off were in Markman and Lorraine business areas.
Summerstrand residential area alone, which most of them were student accommodation letting houses owed just more than R6 million combined, with the biggest single amount owed, approximately R2.6 million.
Businesses visited today accounted for R4.4 million with the biggest single amount of R963 000, most of them operating in North-end and Markman.
The houses and businesses visited, were those that owed the metro but yet they continue to illegally access electricity even after being disconnected by the Municipality, by bypassing the system while some have tempered with the electricity meters.
During the operation the team led by the Executive Mayor was shocked to find out that among those who were visited, there were repeat offenders whom the metro had visited before and disconnected.
“It is unacceptable that some people in the not so affluent areas and the townships continue to pay their rates and people in these affluent areas who even receive rent money from students decide not to pay and connect illegally,” said Executive Mayor Van Nierkerk.
On electricity alone, the metro looses R1 billion per year.
“We have a fair system that meets you halfway. We are saying if you cannot afford to pay and have proof of that, come to Municipality to make a payment arrangement. We have staff that are always lenient to your situation. Some just decide to just ignore all reminders and warnings from our revenue team, when we switch off, they illegally reconnect themselves again.
That illegal practice has come to an end. We cannot continue to lose revenue intended for delivering services and improving the lives of the metro and its people,” said Van Niekerk.
The Executive Mayor committed that the metro will be pursuing a legal route for those that have been found to have illegally reconnected themselves following a cut off by one of the Revenue Enhancement Task Team members.
Since the Covid19 shutdown in 2020 the metro is seeing a drastic decline in revenue collection. For the past two years the metro has been on the road to recovery with revenue collection moving from just above 60 percent to 76.1 percent that was recorded at the end of April 2024.
Currently the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is owed R14 billion by residential and businesses combined.
NMB Communications
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