The Polokwane Municipality in Limpopo has cut off power to government departments that have fallen behind on their payments.
The Portfolio Committee on Finance visited several provincial government departments, where members of the committee cut off the electricity supply directly from the transformers feeding the affected buildings.
The affected governmental departments in the province failed to honour their contractual obligations by defaulting on their electricity bills.
The estimated debt by more than 10 departments and some state-owned entities sits at a staggering R230 million. The municipality has now taken a bold step to recover some of the financial losses.
Polokwane Municipality Spokesperson Thipa Selala says, “The departments combined with the government entities they are owing the municipality around R252 million. So we have been negotiating with the departments since November last year some have not made any commitments and some have but they have never we are going to pay but now they have all defaulted on their payments.”
Businesses in the city that have also defaulted will also be switched off.
“It is not only departments we are targetting, even individuals and businesses that owe the municipality a lot of money. We are also going to switch off those individuals, even businesses that are owing the municipality a lot of money. We are targetting a least the top twenty now that are owing the municipality.”
The provincial government says it’s aware that failure to comply will result in dark days ahead. Limpopo government spokesperson Ndavhe Ramakuela says, “We have taken note of what the Polokwane municipality is doing in exercising its credit control policy by switching off departments or provincial departments and state-owned entities that may be owing them taxes and services that are due to them, we have an inter-governmental forum chaired by the office of the premier and in that forum, we encourage departments to ensure that their accounts are up to date, in this regard, we will still continue to review how much is being owed.”
On the first day of the switch-off, five departments were cut off and now rely only on backup generators.
