EMALAHLENI Municipality will soon start a name and shame game to try and force consumers to pay their electricity bills.
The municipality blasted Eskom last month by revealing that it owed the council over R12 million in outstanding property rates.
Now the municipality will target businesses which owe a combined
R280 million and local churches, which owe R4 million.
National and provincial departments owe the municipality over R40 million and households owe R1,6 billion.
The name and shame game will go hand-in-hand with power cuts. Eskom has been cutting off electricity twice a day for two-hour periods until the municipality settles part of its debt. The municipality said it has no choice, as Eskom threatened to cut power to the town if they were not paid R722 million by last Thursday.
Municipal spokesman Kingdom Mabuza said: “At a meeting held in Mbombela last week, the power utility rejected the municipality’s proposals to service the debt.
“The municipality had already paid more than R80 million to the power utility since the first notice of power cuts was announced, and have made an arrangement to pay R483 million more.
“We will need our customers to start paying their outstanding electricity arrears if we are to tackle the R940 million debt to Eskom.”
