Note to editors: Please find English soundbite by Mike Waters MPL.
Companies rendering services to the City of Ekurhuleni are struggling to sustain their businesses and pay their employees due to the city’s failure to pay them within the stipulated 30 days. Such delays will result in job losses and service delivery failure.
The City of Ekurhuleni’s debt to service providers has ballooned to R13 billion, more than double the R6 billion figure the Gauteng MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) reported to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL) last month.
This is not a bookkeeping error; it is a direct violation of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), which requires municipalities to pay service providers within 30 days. In failing to do so, Ekurhuleni is breaking the law, crippling small businesses, and sabotaging service delivery across the city.
Contractors who are not paid cannot pay their workers and have had to lay people off. Projects grind to a halt. Communities are left without the services they depend on. The ANC’s financial mismanagement has pushed Ekurhuleni into a full-blown crisis zone.
R13 billion in unpaid bills is not just a number on a spreadsheet; it means small businesses going under, workers not getting paid, and communities left without services. The current administration has turned Ekurhuleni into a debtor’s prison, the MEC is the warden.
This ongoing financial crisis in Ekurhuleni deserves immediate attention. The DA will write to MEC Mamabolo to ascertain what measures and interventions his department is taking to assist this metro to address this issue. The DA Ekurhuleni caucus will also raise this issue in council for it to be addressed. The DA will continue to hold this government accountable until residents get the services they pay for.