With many municipalities struggling to maintain sound financial reserves due to poor revenue collection, KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Rev. Thulasizwe Buthelezi, has encouraged municipalities to strengthen their revenue efforts to improve their financial state.
MEC Rev. Buthelezi was speaking at the two-day Revenue Solution Summit-Master Class Edition, organised by the department in partnership with eThekwini Metro’s Municipal Institute of Learning (MILE), which concluded on Thursday at the Durban ICC.
The summit brought together key role players in municipal finances, including revenue managers and chief financial officers from various municipalities and stakeholders such as Umgeni-Uthukela Water and Eskom. The masterclass discussed municipal revenue management, focusing on debt collection efforts and debt profiling to enhance municipal revenue streams and budgeting efforts.
As MEC Rev. Buthelezi marked the beginning of his term in the department, he made a clarion call to all accounting officers and municipalities to explore new ways of encouraging people to pay for services to increase revenue. He pledged his support in encouraging communities to pay for services.
He stressed that most municipalities were struggling to collect revenue to sustain their finances as stated in the Auditor General’s reports.
Municipalities must conduct metre audits regularly to eradicate illegal connections and impose harsher penalties on those found tampering with municipal infrastructure to discourage similar offences. Municipalities need to further improve internal systems and processes to deal with metre reading, integration, and billing to ensure that customers receive accurate bills.
As a department, we will continue to monitor your financial and revenue management systems as part of our support to municipalities.
This is an area that you will have to tighten going forward.
We will also embark on a Masakhane Campaign to encourage those consumers who can pay to pay for services to ensure the sustainability of services and service delivery to all communities,” concluded MEC Rev. Buthelezi.