IT seems as though service delivery will continue moving at a snail’s pace in the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality area, as the municipality will be using a portion of its equitable share to pay a chunk of its multimillion debt to Eskom.
The equitable share is a financial allocation in the form of an unconditional grant that enables municipalities to provide basic services to poor households, and to enable municipalities with limited own resources to afford basic administrative and governance capacity and perform core municipal functions.
In last week’s special council meeting, which sat at the Skweyiya Hall, the municipality was given the green light by the council to use the money to pay the power generator, which had issued a notice to interrupt power supply to Komani and Tarkastad towns for a debt of more than R300 million.
But Eskom had demanded that the municipality service its current debt of R162 million within 40 days as from November 1. The 40-day period is set to lapse on December 10.
Mayor for the embattled Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality, Luleka Gubhula, said they couldn’t raise such an amount and the municipality had set its hopes on the equitable share that is said to be withheld by Treasury.
But on Friday, Gubhula said she had received correspondence from the Treasury, committing to release the funds to the municipal accounts soon.
According to Gubhula, they are set to receive R70 million and R55 million which adds up to R125 million.
“The proposal is to take an amount of R50 million from the R70 million and another R40 million from the R55 million (R90 million) to pay to Eskom since they demanded R162 million,” Gubhula raised the proposal and the council nodded.
She further said after paying the monies, the delegation had a meeting with Eskom in early November to negotiate a way out of the power cuts while the municipality tries to gather more funds to pay the remaining amount.
“It is of importance to prepare the muni-cipality that if Eskom will not agree then an urgent application to interdict Eskom be looked at,” she said.
The local business community, through the Border-Kei Chamber of Business supported by the apex body of the civic community – Let’s Talk Komani – had just interdicted Eskom from implementing the power cuts planned to commence from November 25.
But the interdict granted by the Grahamstown High Court depends on the outcome of the primary court application by the chamber to have one of the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality’s accounts ring-fenced so that funds collected from electricity users are used to pay Eskom.
The matter is set to be heard before the Grahamstown High Court on December 12 (Thursday next week).
