accounts
Rodney Victor
The Pretoria City Council this week called for “bright ideas” for an incentive scheme to reward residents who are up to date with their municipal accounts and encourage those who aren’t to start paying off their arrears.
Pretoria, like all South African local authorities, is battling a culture of non- payment for services that began as a popularist ground-level struggle against the former regime during the apartheid era. Now, more than five years into the new South Africa, councils are still finding it difficult to persuade those who previously boycotted their accounts to pay for services rendered.
Residents owe the Pretoria council some R574-million in outstanding service accounts accumulated since 1994, said Pretoria communications officer, Antoinette Mostert.
Businesses owe the council a further R235-million, she added. “It’s crucial that we get this money in, because we can’t sustain the services we provide without it.”
Incentive schemes the council wants to investigate include rebates, discounts, games and promotional competitions. All ideas have to comply with the provisions of the Lotteries Act, said Mostert. Whether any such scheme might prove successful in Pretoria is open to question, judging by the experiences of two other Gauteng local authorities.
Three years ago the Kempton Park local council launched a “Pay and Win” competition. Residents who were up to date with their payments were awarded prizes like television sets, cookware, kettles, toasters and other household goods on a monthly basis.
The competition was abandoned after about six months, said Kempton Park public relations officer, Henriette Weeseman.
“We tried it as an experiment, but there wasn’t a sufficient increase in payment levels to justify the extra expenses involved,” she said.
Kempton Park is currently owed some R423- million in unpaid accounts, Weeseman said, but she could not give a breakdown between residents and businesses.
Soon after the launch of the Kempton Park competition, Johannesburg’s Southern Local Authority launched an even more ambitious one, with prizes of R10E000, R5E000 and R3E000 being given to residents whose accounts were fully paid up.
This too was abandoned after six months. The competition was cancelled because the metropolitan council took over the southern council’s credit control measures at that time, said the southern council’s strategic executive, finance, Bethwell Jwili. “There was no justification for us continuing with the competition,” he said.
However Democratic Party councillor on the southern council, Chris Botha, put a slightly different complexion on the matter.
“Most of the winners were too pale. The folk in Soweto didn’t really buy into the idea, and it was self-defeating when we were giving away big prizes to people who were already paying their bills,” he said.
Johannesburg residents and businesses currently owe the metropolitan council some R2,98-billion in unpaid arrears, while its southern council is owed some R1,3-billion, according to the metro council’s chief financial officer, Roland Hunter. However, about R500-million of this consists of current accounts, the bulk of which could be expected to be paid, he said.
Director of communications for the Department of Provincial and Local Government Fred Barron said councils are expected to come up with “creative strategies” to overcome the culture of non- payment. Councils need to distinguish between residents who are genuinely unable to pay and those who could pay but are unwilling to do so, he said.
Those who are in a position to pay should be subjected to “due process” if they continue boycotting their accounts, he said.
DP representative on provincial and local government affairs James Selfe said the culture of non-payment has resulted in one out of every six local authorities being technically bankrupt, and a further three or four out of every six being insufficiently creditworthy to be granted loans by commercial banks.
“It’s a massive problem, and often there is not the political will to do anything about it. In Port Elizabeth they tried very hard to collect the money owing, but then a lot of councillors got death threats and that was the end of the matter,” he said.
One outstanding success story was the desperately poor community of Riversdale in the Western Cape, which for two years running has been awarded a prize by the Department of Provincial and Local Government for the successful collection of arrears, he said.
“The council works very closely with the community, and if anyone falls behind or is unable to pay the full amount, then they work out a repayment plan with the person concerned so at least they get some of the money coming in, rather than nothing at all,” he said.