Tshwane fines businesses that had illegal connections as it collects revenue

A file picture of Tshwane officials disconnecting electricity at a building. Picture: Jacques Naude/African News Agency (ANA)

A file picture of Tshwane officials disconnecting electricity at a building. Picture: Jacques Naude/African News Agency (ANA)

Published Feb 10, 2023

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Pretoria - Tshwane mayor Randall Williams was yesterday part of the operation aimed at disconnecting services to defaulting clients and ripping apart illegal connections.

Williams joined the MMC for Finance Peter Sutton with various municipal officials “to once again lend my full support and drive our revenue collection campaign".

He said: “We conducted the campaign in the inner city and in Pretoria West, where we largely targeted businesses that have repeatedly failed to pay the City for services rendered.

“The various businesses, together with one government department, owed the City about R50 million for defaulting on their water bills. During the revenue collection drive, we also discovered that three properties that house a private school, a hair salon, hardware and scrapyards for cars were illegally connected.”

In one building, the electricity connection came from the City’s substation, and it was feeding two more properties next to it.

“Our teams immediately disconnected the illegal connections. We have since issued the businesses with illegal electricity connection fines of R10m each,” Williams said.

“I want to encourage our teams who are driving this campaign to push ahead, as this will ultimately benefit Tshwane residents. Increased revenue collection is critically important to any municipality to effectively run its operations and to enable quality service delivery.

“I also want to encourage our consumers pay for services consumed or alternatively to come forward and to make payment arrangements with the City to keep their accounts in good standing.”

Pretoria News