The Carte Blanche team was in Welkom this past week to look into the myriad of service delivery issues at play in Welkom, which falls under Matjhabeng’s Goldfields. 

Their visit comes after Sedibeng Water cut water supply to Matjhabeng, owing to the municipality’s whopping R4,4 billion debt after the water board’s creditors - Eskom in particular - came to roost demanding the financially strained water board, which services municipalities in the North West and Northern Cape, make a part payment of its debt. 

The situation was rectified following intervention from the Provincial and National Departments of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), as well as Water and Sanitation, respectively. This was in addition to a court bid by lobby group Afriforum. Carte Blanche’s Macfarlene Moleli shares how businesses in his home city are being affected. 

Moleli says whilst some of the businesses have opted to leave the area, he marvels at the resilience of those who remain in Welkom, Odendaalsrus, Virginia and others, because they have no other choice but to make it work. “A lot of them are calling for qualified people to be hired in government. Those who have left say they cannot function with electricity and water cuts”.

The full Carte Blanche insert on Matjhabeng’s challenges airs tonight on Mnet.

Meanwhile, Sedibeng is still battling the issue of striking employees. OFM News is told that the part payments made by Matjhabeng and Nala are still not enough to implement salary increments. This has led to workers continuing to boycott work despite being paid their October salaries earlier in the week.

The head of Cogta, Mokete Duma, previously told OFM News a task team had been appointed to establish if municipalities owing the water utility, are paying their accounts. These monthly payments are running into millions of rands at a time. 

OFM News previously reported that the Bothaville-based Nala Local Municipality owes Sedibeng Water over R245 million, whilst the Welkom-based Matjhabeng Local Municipality owes it over R4 billion. 

Duma says the water board faced difficulties and could not operate fully due to the debt owed to it by these municipalities.

“It’s one of the entities that is not getting money directly from the national government fiscus, but they are expected to generate their own income through the sale of water. However, because municipalities are also having challenges, as people are not paying for rates and taxes and people are unemployed. So, these are some of the problems. The established task teams will be dealing broadly with those issues,” he adds.

OFM News