It’s been a week that workers, including general workers and officials of the municipality, have desperately been waiting for their payment. This was after the cash-strapped municipality had its account frozen and attached to the South African Municipal Workers’ (SAMWU) pension fund following a court battle over a R25 million third party payment dispute. Workers were supposed to have been paid on 23 September but intervention by the courts set back negotiations that would have possibly seen workers get paid on Thursday 30 September 2021. To date, no one has been paid. Meanwhile, the head of Cooperative Governance and Traditional affairs (Cogta), Mokete Duma, tells OFM News the situation presents a crisis but the department, together with treasury, are putting thier heads together to come up with a solution.

“We have developed a financial recovery plan which will focus on revenue enhancement, reducing on unnecessary expenditure and try to accumulate enough money so that they can continue to meet their financial obligation. It’s not only the SAMWU pension fund, they have got quite a number of service providers who have also raised particularly the concerns that Kopanong is not actually paying them. So it’s a real crisis,” he adds.  
 
OFM News previously reported the bank account of the Kopanong Local Municipality in the Free State has been attached, allowing SAMWU to take control of it.

READ MORE: FS municipal account attached 
 
The municipal spokesperson, Solly Phama, confirms to OFM News that the attachment has resulted in the Municipality not being able to render its mandate as expected and this has impacted negatively on service delivery.
 
In February 2021, Samwu's provincial secretary, Tiisetso Mahlatsi, told OFM News that workers who were employed from 2012 were not registered with the provident fund - but that money was being deducted with no contribution made by the municipality. Phama says the attachment has resulted in the municipality not being able to perform its operations as expected.

READ MORE: Kopanong pension saga drags on
 
OFM News previously reported that the municipality in February had scheduled to auction its fleet towards the payment of municipal workers’ pension fund which allegedly has not been paid since 2012.

READ MORE: Auctioning of Kopanong's fleet halted
 
This municipality is amongst those in the Free State, such as the troubled Mangaung Municipality which includes Bloemfontein, that owed millions of rands to service providers such as BloemWater. In 2020 the water board revealed that Kopanong owed them over R300 million.
 
OFM News