By Annisa Essack

27:05:2021

Municipal mayor Mxolisi Kaunda, during a live 2021/22 policy budget held at Durban ICC today, revealed that the eThekwini Municipality had lost R34 billion in income due to Covid-19.

The mortifying news comes as the Covid-19 pandemic had wreaked havoc on various local businesses, which resulted in companies retrenching staff, with many reporting revenue losses and others forced to change their business models. 

The mayor further revealed that 6000 companies were forced to close down, resulting in 300 000 jobs lost. The pandemic, he said, was a wake-up call on how the current economic models are viewed.

What’s more, the City has seen a drastic decrease in its revenue.

“As a result of Covid-19, our collection rate dropped from 95% in March 2020 to 56% in April 2020. We then introduced a debt relief programme that assisted businesses and residents; at the same time, no interest was raised on arrears. This allowed for a favourable payment plan to settle arrears. When this relief programme comes to an end in June 2021, a new Covid-19 Relief Strategy will be put forward to respond to the third wave of the pandemic and to assist customers,” he said.

Kaunda said that the relief programme has seen an amount of R1.3 billion in arrears being secured for payment as almost 20 000 customers took advantage of this intervention. He further announced that the City’s revenue collection rate has substantially improved to an average of 94.7% as of 30 April 2021.

Kaunda said they had decided to increase the City’s water and sanitation tariff to 8.5 per cent after Umgeni Water Board raised the water tariff by 7%.

“Property rates and refuse tariff increases have been kept to a historic low of 4.9%. The Eskom bulk tariff increase for electricity is 17.8%, which has resulted in an increase of 14.59% for electricity by the City. This is the recommended increase for municipalities by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA),” he said.

Kaunda added that they managed to strike a tricky balancing act to ensure that the tariff increases remain affordable, considering the challenging and harsh economic climate confronting everyone.