Tshwane mayor on a mission to restore city’s poor finances

Brink's goal was to mend the auditor-general’s adverse findings for the city’s 2021/22 financial year. Another was to catch up with its ongoing debt with Eskom, he said.

“We are in a cash crunch. We owe Eskom money, which has an effect on service delivery. There is also absolute havoc caused by stage 6 load-shedding on service infrastructure.

“In many communities, once load-shedding ends, the power doesn’t come back on and it destroys service infrastructure, heightens wear and tear on cables, networks and everything blows. Also, cable thieves strike,” he said.

He said the municipality's account with Eskom was still in arrears but it had an open policy with the power utility should it fail to pay.

“We have to get up to 96% of current collection rate and we are nowhere near that. Unless we fix that, we won’t be able to get on top of the Eskom bill. We are open with Eskom and if we find in a particular month we won’t be able to make the commitment, we are honest with them.”

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.