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11/03/2020 10:11:53
Picture: OUTA
It’s time to dissolve Emfuleni council says OUTA
The seizure of movable assets from Emfuleni Municipality is yet another clear and unambiguous reason as to why the Emfuleni Municipality should be dissolved, says the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA).
OUTA Operations Executive Julius Kleynhans said Emfuleni, once the industrial heartland of Gauteng, creating wealth and employment for communities in Sebokeng, Vanderbijlpark, Vereeniging and Sharpeville, has “totally collapsed” and is in need of “urgent intervention”.
On Monday morning assets such as vehicles and office furniture at the municipality’s Vanderbijlpark office were seized by order of the Sheriff of the Court due to R2.3 billion in unpaid debt owed to Eskom.
“The crisis in Emfuleni has been unfolding over several years. This once prosperous region now has raw sewage flowing into rivers and is in a perpetual state of financial crisis while entrenched maladministration and corruption continue unabated. It is remarkable that the Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee would place Tshwane under administration and dissolve its council while in the same breath they have hopelessly failed to act decisively on Emfuleni which on any reasonable scale, is in a far worse situation than the country’s capital,” said Kleynhans.
The Gauteng government undertook an intervention into Emfuleni in June 2018 with a financial recovery plan introduced in September 2018.
“The financial recovery plan has failed. The municipality is bankrupt, it has no assets to continue its operations, its debt is astronomical and services have collapsed. This is not something any government or individual can possibly be proud of. It is time for the Gauteng Provincial Executive to swallow its pride and reset this municipality by dissolving council and taking proper action to serve the public,” said Kleynhans.