Durban - Councillors who fail to pay their municipal bills on time will have disciplinary steps taken against them by the office of the speaker.
The office of eThekwini speaker Thabani Nyawose has oversight over the behaviour of the city’s councillors.
On Friday, the municipality gave an assurance councillors were not and would not get preferential treatment compared to private citizens when it came to paying municipal bills.
The concerns come after The Mercury reported recently councillors and city officials owed the council R52 million in municipal bills.
Staff members at senior or executive levels were among those who have been “tardy” with paying their bills.
eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda said: “Recently, there have been reports about councillors and employees who are owing the municipality for services. We want to make it categorically clear that our staff members are not allowed to be in arrears for more than 90 days in their municipal accounts, according to Schedule 10 of the staff Code of Conduct.”
He said when employees failed to bring their accounts up to date, then the municipality deducted the amounts owed from their salaries. The process was the same with councillors.
However, Kaunda continued, over and above applying credit control measures, a disciplinary action must be instituted by the speaker of council.
“We want to emphasise that councillors and staff members are also customers of the municipality, and they are subject to all credit control measures except that there is an additional process that applies to them because of the code of conduct,” he said.