JOHANNESBURG - The City of Joburg said that it was looking at means to write off of the multi-billion rand electricity debt accumulated by Soweto residents.Joburg Mayor Mpho Phalatse said that the city hoped to find a deal that would see households start on a clean slate.
The latest protest three weeks ago drew hundreds of residents who blockaded major routes across Soweto before marching to the mayoral office in Braamfontein, demanding that the city address electricity outages. "We've established internally, together with our own treasury, that the debt is actually worth nothing because nobody can recover that debt, so we need to have an honest conversation about this debt. We've spoken to the leadership about helping us manage that debt - there's no such thing as free electricity. Anyone that can afford to pay must pay," Phalatse said.
A nation of hand outs , spells disaster, when we going to change our south African culture
Who is going to cough up this shortfall, if not the residence of Soweto? Our_DA is this is going to compromise your promise to develop the infrastructure in JHB, including electricity supply, you can kiss my vote goodbye.
What makes you think soweto will start paying once the debt is written off ?
I'm also open to getting FREE electricity and everything else for that matter. Oh and open to writing the ANC off too.
All south Africans are equal before the law, soweto people are not special all South Africans must have their electricity debts scraped.
There we go again dividing communities! CoJ spends millions replacing stolen cables, transformers ect. to criminality yet the ordinary citizen must cough up? People in aŕears get cut off? Note some CoJ employees brige their own power (source from Broadband)!
WHAT! Unacceptable. Even Tshwane had to cough up.
It will be discrimination for rest of us. You write them off , you write of everyone’s debt
And if you do that you will write off the debt of everyone in the damn country.
Must be nice
If there is not a single illegal connection and EVERYONE has a Pre paid electricity & water meter installed then it's a viable choice but regular inspections must take place with an entire block being switched off if an illegal connection is found
SEPTEMBER 2021 soweto debt was decreased from 12.8 mil to 7.5 mil..then DEC wrote off 6.9 mil of the remaining 7.5 mil ...not even a year ago ESKOM wrote off that massive debt, now they want it done again? fiscal responsibility will never happen like this.
We are actually not even bothered by that debt, we know nothing about
Again?
NO NO NO
If they scrap Soweto then they must scrap everybody's debt this is not fair 😤
what message does this send out? okay not to pay? maybe we should all move to Soweto, hey mayor? see how that plays out. you can guess how it ends. you're mos a doctor.
Of course. Cause that's how we deal will ALL of us who default on payments isn't it? MphoForMayor
No no no no... stop this nonsense. Who must pay these costs? It cannot carry on like this..
We do pay electricity; we do pay, in the best of our responsibilities, our duties and obligations, and yet the consideration is way too flexible and way too obvious. The voting niche is right there. This is inverted Apartheid at its best... benefiting those who represent votes.
Someone has to cover that debt, so lets burden those already paying, seems fair Our_DA
We cannit give preference to ONE township....use the service pay for the service! No more FREE anything
Then they must know all the Township will follow suit
Then all south Africans are open to talks to write off all municipal debt...