The Matjhabeng Municipality in the Free State has been dealt a huge blow in the Johannesburg High Court in its legal battle with service providers.

On Thursday (26/10) the court struck an application for an urgent appeal off the roll. It was launched by the municipality after the same court made an order which saw the municipal account being attached. The court struck the Matjhabeng matter off the roll due to a lack of urgency. It’s understood that the municipality will now be approaching a well-known bank to have it release money so that workers can be paid.

OFM News recently learned two service providers dragged the municipality to court to demand payment of over R120 million and the municipal account as a consequence of the court case was attached. It’s also understood that there are more service providers – at least 11 – who are demanding payments of R750 million from the troubled municipality.

However, during a media briefing on Wednesday, Mayor Thanduxolo Khalipha said it emerged later that the service providers wanted to settle for R200 million. They refused the settlement and opted for a court action which they lost when the court ruled in favour of the service providers.

This has since led to the municipality failing to pay workers their October month’s salary. Following this, workers staged a protest inside the premises of the municipality demanding their salaries. Workers on Friday (27/10) shut down the municipality with officials barred from accessing the workplace. Disgruntled workers, affiliated with mostly the South African Workers Union (Samwu), have called for Khalipha’s resignation.

They have branded him as a heartless and cruel leader who does not care about the worker’s needs.

During this briefing, Khalipa told Journalists that the municipality owes Eskom R5 billion and Vaal Central Water Board over R5 billion. The municipality is also among some of the ailing municipalities that owe third-party contributions. The Lejweleputswa’s SAMWU regional deputy secretary Dan Mana told OFM News the municipality owes millions of rands to third-party contributions.

This includes provident funds and medical aid, among others. Mana said a few years ago the municipality owed a contribution of about R5 million to R10 million. Mana revealed this whilst irate municipal workers were protesting inside the municipal premises of the Welkom municipality on Wednesday (25/10) following the non-payment of salaries. The municipality is yet to comment. 

In 2021, OFM News reported the troubled Trompsburg-based Kopanong Local Municipality took three months to pay workers, following a Free State High Court judgment that attached the municipality’s bank account after they failed to pay workers' pension contributions to the South African Municipal Workers Union’s (Samwu) pension fund since 2012. This was said to have been around R26 million at the time.

OFM News/Lucky Nkuyane