Emfuleni’s woes far from over as refuse piles up
Gauteng government’s interventions not bearing fruit yet
Residents of the bankrupt Emfuleni local municipality in the Vaal will have to live with sewage spillages in the streets, unreliable electricity supply, potholes and a lack of refuse collection for much longer.
So bad is the financial mess that has led to a total collapse of service delivery that even the administrator that has been appointed by the Gauteng government to stabilise the situation cannot say when residents and businesses will be able to enjoy proper service delivery.
Administrator Gilberto Martins, who began his work in December, has a mammoth task and revealed to Sowetan that due to a lack of payment to service providers, some companies are refusing to do work with the municipality, leaving towns and townships in disarray.
This has also led to numerous protests. “The fact that there is sewerage on the streets, I cannot resolve that overnight. We have to communicate the real situation to the community. It is no use telling people I will fix your sewer in one hour. It is a lie. I don’t have the people. I don’t have the trucks. I don’t have the equipment,” Martins said.
Last week, Sowetan visited Vanderbijlpark, Sebokeng, Vereeniging and Sharpeville and found that the impact of the lack of service delivery was huge and residents had resorted to dumping anywhere.
The municipality owes Eskom and Rand Water R3.2bn and R1.3bn, respectively. This led to two of the municipality’s biggest accounts being attached after a court order was granted and the municipality was unable to pay companies for services rendered.
There are 36 companies owed between R1m and R30m and their total debt is R107m.“The municipality could not pay people it owed amounts as small as R2,500. Unfortunately some of these service providers are small businesses. We decided to pay all those we owe small amounts of money. How we do it is that if I owe you R2,000, I easily pay you. If I owe you R10,000 I pay you over three to four months,” he said.
Last week, Gauteng Cogta MEC Lebogang Maile announced several interventions, which include payment agreements that have been reached with Rand Water and Eskom. Other interventions include for the department of water and sanitation to provide the municipality with eight sewer unblocking trucks at a cost of R14m. About R52m has been set aside for the rehabilitation and resealing of roads.
A total of R400m is urgently required for road resurfacing in the municipality. Integrated development plans of Emfuleni indicate that the municipality needs R5bn to address road infrastructure problems. The Gauteng government has set aside R53m to restore weekly collection of waste.
The provincial department of agriculture and rural development will procure trucks on behalf of the municipality and these will be delivered no later than March.
Emfuleni has been under administration since 2018.
Martins’ priority is to fix finances, supply chain management and get service delivery rolling. He works with five other people and give weekly reports to Maile and managers in the municipality.
Martins said the municipality had 2,400 employees and has been able to pay them from rates collections. Its salary bill is R95m a month.
Emfuleni is one of the three local municipalities in the Sedibeng district.
It covers townships such as Evaton, Sebokeng, Sharpeville, Boipatong, Bophelong , Tshepiso and towns which include, Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark.
Its main tourism attraction is the Vaal River but sewage has been spilling into the river due to poor water infrastructure. This has had a huge impact on tourism.
With such a strategic positioning, the municipality has struggled to thrive due to poor governance and corruption and has had three mayors since 2017.
In 2018, the Hawks launched an investigation into R870m worth of irregular expenditure awarded by the council during the 2016/17 financial year.
Giving progress on the municipality last year, Maile said he intervened in the municipality as there were violent service delivery protests, the collapse of waste management services, poor revenue collection, sewer spillage, allegations of corruption, and ailing water and electricity infrastructure.
In November 2017, then mayor Simon Mofokeng resigned after his arrest on allegations that he sexually groomed a 14-year-old girl.
Jacob Khawe took over in July 2018 but resigned in December that year. He was replaced by Rev Gift Moerane.
The government deployed engineers from SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to clean the waste water treatment plant.
The engineers were required to perform a number of tasks, including unblocking sewer lines and manholes.
As a result of the SANDF’s 15 months of work, seven pump stations were operational and another 24 are functioning but still required attention.
The engineers withdrew in January 2020. Sewerage is still flowing into the Vaal River and this has pushed non-profit organisation Save The Vaal to launch another court action to compel the government to fix the sewerage system of Emfuleni.
“We are now preparing papers and going to court to try to get this court order served because they [government] are in contempt of court. As we speak, the sewerage is still flowing into the Vaal,” said Mike Gaade, the organisation’s technical officer.
Article by Penwell Dlamini and originally published in The Sowetan