Central SA
Emfuleni municipal employees return after protesting over unpaid salaries─── ZENANDE MPAME 14:55 Thu, 03 Oct 2024
“The municipality equally wants to apologise to all employees for the anguish and inconvenience caused by the dispute.”
Operations are back in full swing at the Emfuleni Municipality after employees’ protest action.
This unrest followed after Eskom’s attachment of the municipality’s bank accounts in an attempt to recover a staggering R8 billion debt for unpaid electricity.
The move restricted Emfuleni’s financial operations, leaving thousands of employees and councillors without pay and halting essential service delivery.
“Operations at Emfuleni Municipality are in full swing and an agreement has been reached with Eskom,” said Emfuleni municipal spokesperson, Makhosonke Sangweni. “We would like to seize the opportunity to sincerely apologise to all residents for the inconvenience caused by the bank account attachment that affected the provision of services over the past few days.”
After repeated failures to settle the debt under the Municipal Finance Management Act’s (MFMA) 124 Debt Relief Programme, the power utility decided to seize all four of the municipality’s bank accounts to recover the debt owed by the municipality to them.
In September, Eskom announced in a statement that the sheriff of the court had successfully attached the municipality's four bank accounts to ensure that the money it collected for electricity would be paid directly to Eskom.
Workers downed tools on Tuesday (1/10) and protested. Photo supplied
News24 reports, according to Eskom the municipality failed to comply with the requirements of the debt relief programme. The power utility added that it had “exhausted all legal and mediation avenues to secure payment for services rendered since 2018”.
“An attachment of bank accounts means the municipality isn’t able to transact and, over time, service delivery will collapse. If it continues, it won’t be possible to pay the accounts that are supposed to be paid,” said Emfuleni municipality MMC for Finance and Revenue, Hassan Mako.
‘We feel that we have not been treated fairly by Eskom’
“We are not happy with how we are handling matters with Eskom. That is why we have reverted to the courts. We feel that we have not been treated fairly by Eskom.”
The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) joined in solidarity with the disgruntled staff.
