The City of Johannesburg warns thousands of defaulting residential property owners and businesses that, it intends to soon blacklist them to recoup more than R40 billion in municipal debt.
The City has a growing municipal debt of more than R52 billion, which it intends to curb with its aggressive credit control campaigns.
The City also intends to invoke its Credit Control and Debt Collection Policy by reporting defaulting payers to appropriate Credit Bureaus.
Tebogo Moraka, Group Chief Financial Officer, says the City has set up a Specialised Revenue Collection Team which will specifically target these defaulting payers across the City, and try to recoup the monies owed to the City.
“Residents who are in arrears with their municipal accounts and who have not made arrangements for settling their bills, run the risk of being blacklisted. “Business and domestic customers who perpetually default will soon be targeted by our specialised team as part of the City’s aggressive credit control campaign,” he said.
“These are individual businesses and households whose municipal accounts are in arrears with more than 61 days. These steps are necessary as the City also has bills to pay like Eskom and Rand Water.”
Moraka says defaulting customers under the City’s radar for being blacklisted, are those customers who have simply refused to respond positively to the City urging them to pay their accounts over a long time.
“These customers are those who would have gone through all the City’s processes to get them to pay their debt but had simply ignored all communication from the City. The City would have issued them with pre-termination notices informing them of the outstanding arrears and giving them enough time (14 days) to approach the City and 1 settle their debt. The City would have also sent them final demand notices, sent SMSs and calling them to remind them to urgently settle their accounts without success,” says Moraka.
Moraka says, the City was left with no choice but to hand over these perpetual defaulters to the Specialised Revenue Collection Team to begin the process of blacklisting them. Additionally, illegal connection of services will be considered a serious offence and such connections will be removed to terminate the service immediately.
Moraka reiterates that the City will not hesitate to lay criminal charges or effect arrests, impose hefty fines, and immediately disconnect electricity and water supply to those who illegally connect themselves to the services. All property owners who are struggling to service their accounts for various reasons, should approach the City, to avoid being cut off by making payment arrangement and signing an acknowledgement of debt.
