“The municipality is losing millions of rands every year through illegal connections”
EMALAHLENI – The Emalahleni municipality has begun disconnecting illegal connections in an attempt to reboost revenue collection. The municipality’s revenue collection is said to have improved from 54% to an average of 60% collection.
When tabling her 100 days milestone in October last year, Mayor Leah Mabuza made a commitment to push revenue collection to, at least, a minimal of 80%. “Our 2023/2024 budget is based on 80% revenue collection, if we under-collect we will not be able to achieve the service delivery targets we have set together with you,” she said at the time.
She added that the municipality has intensified installation of consumer smart meters, operations to disconnect illegal connections and cut-offs as part of mandatory strategies to reboot our revenue collection measures.
The cut off operations kicked off on Friday, 16 February, at ward 23 in KwaGuqa extensions targeting big and small businesses including residential complexes.
During the campaign, Mayor Mabuza discovered that eleven foreign-owned spaza shops were illegally connected to the electricity network through households and were not paying for consumption.
Most spaza shops are owned by Pakistanis, Ethiopians, and Somalians, especially in the extensions of Ezinambeni, Vosman, Hlalanikahle, Msagweni, Phola, and Klarinet.
“The municipality is losing millions of rands every year through illegal connections by businesses alone. The municipality will be intensifying its compliance campaigns to curb these losses,” she expressed.
To curb illegal electricity bridging connections, said to have increased drastically over the last couple of years, the no-nonsense team cut off and issued fines to any illegal connects found.
“It was discovered that the community in Ward 23 is surrounded by illegal spaza shops ran by foreign nationals who are illegally connected to the power supply and are selling counterfeit goods in an unhealthy and unclean environment,” municipal spokesman Lebo Mofokeng said.
“The executive mayor, Cllr Leah Mabuza was part of the cut of team and noted that Emalahleni Local Municipality is losing millions of rands annually due to illegal connections within the business sector alone.”
Mofokeng added that mayor Mabuza encouraged the community of Emalahleni to approach the municipality in order to settle unpaid bills and make arrangements to settle their debt.
