National
Municipal indigent registers to be cleaned up: Gordhan─── 05:30 Fri, 12 Jun 2015
Cape Town - South Africa’s premiers have been tasked with assisting municipalities in cleaning up their indigent registers after several cases of fraud were picked up, said Local Government and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan on Thursday.
“These are registers of people who have an income of less than twice the old age grant who are entitled to free basic services form government,” Gordhan said at a media briefing at Tuynhuys after President Jacob Zuma convened a President’s Coordinating Council (PCC) meeting.
“In the few cases we’ve looked at closely, we find that indigent registers, sometimes, have the names of public sector officials, business people and professionals so that they now get exempt from paying for municipal services. That then deprives the municipality of very urgently needed revenue on their side.”
The PCC is a forum of national government ministers, premiers and local government representatives and is meant to strategise around improving the performance of the three tiers of government.
The PCC was briefed on the debt owed to Eskom by over 50 of the country’s municipalities.
“Here between the national treasury, ourselves, and together with SALGA [South African Local Government Association] we’ve made significant progress. Most of those municipalities have now reached some kind of agreement with Eskom – though not all yet,” said Gordhan.
More than a month ago, Eskom threatened to cut electricity supply to the top 20 defaulting municipalities, but reached a payment settlement with many of them.
Gordhan said while they’re working closely with municipalities struggling to pay Eskom and other creditors, he bemoaned the fact that citizens were also at fault.
“Clearly, we have also been looking at those municipalities carefully and whilst they have challenges in making sure they manage their money well, there is an issue…that is beginning to creep up on all of us in South Africa, and that is a non-payment culture among communities that can actually afford to pay,” he said. “A lot of work needs to be done in this area to ensure that municipalities can get the revenue that is due to them.”
