A host of negative effects due to the ongoing power outages in the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality have resulted in local businesses closing, families leaving town and patients allegedly dying at Frontier Hospital in Komani.
According to Jane Cowley, MPL and Enoch Mgijima Constituency Leader, despite the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality being placed under national administration in terms of section 139 (7) of the South African Constitution, which includes imposing a financial recovery plan to ensure that the municipality meets its service delivery and financial commitments, the plan has not been implemented.
“Businesses have had to run generators for months on end while the municipality stumbles from one electrical disaster to the next. Municipal officials don’t care that the hospital cannot run its ICU ward or theatres, or the fact that patients have (allegedly) died as a direct result of their failures,” said Cowley.
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She said she has written to the National Treasury to pressurise them into ensuring that a financial recovery plan is implemented immediately and monitored regularly.
“This plan must include the ringfencing of revenue generated from electricity sales to pay for bulk purchases and settle debts to Eskom on a monthly basis,” said Cowley.
She further said that she will continue to highlight this crisis at provincial level, while the National Council of Provinces, which is the body tasked with overseeing municipal interventions, will continue to do the same.
Komani-Karoo Express recently reported that Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality is currently losing around R12 million a month in electricity revenue – a main source of income for the local authority.
This was revealed by National Cabinet Representative (NCR) to the municipality, Dr Monde Tom, during a media briefing on Tuesday, August 2.
He said the previous interventions by the provincial government did not yield the intended outcomes, hence the new intervention by national government. The current intervention, which started on May 13, brought to the municipality a team of specialists in finance and engineering among other areas of focus.
Tom said the municipality needed to reduce the number of electricity outages, illegal electricity connections and tempering with electricity meters.The municipality currently owes Eskom R290 million.
