RUSTENBURG HERALD - RUSTENBURG - It’s no secret that the Rustenburg Municipality has for years been accused of unfair and discriminatory selective credit control with the termination of electrical services of residents who have dared to fall into arrears by even the most negligible amount while others are seemingly allowed to work up hundreds of thousands of rand in arrears without the slightest punitive measures.
While this has been denied in the strongest possible terms time after time by the Rustenburg Municipality in the past, one indeed wonders how long such reports by Rustenburg Herald will continue to be dismissed by RLM as nothing but malice.
During the course of the past week Rustenburg Herald has managed to come up with irrefutable evidence that the Municipality is far more lenient and do not act as merciless as usual when the residents in arrears have the correct political affiliation and in particularly it seems, if you are a Councillor or a Member of the Mayoral Committee of the Rustenburg Local Municipality.
While it’s almost invariably standard practice to hear of people whose electrical and/or water services are terminated for falling into of arrears of merely a few hundred rand, Councillors and MMCs are apparently allowed to run up arrears amounting to tens and even hundreds of thousands of rand without the slightest form of reprimand at all. From the astonishing amounts in arrears “credited” to some of the account holders, it is also clear that almost all of these accounts in arrears have been dragging on for months, if not years - ironically in direct contravention of a national regulation which reads as follows:
Local Government: Municipal Systems Act - Item 12A: Act 51 of 2002: “A Councillor may NOT be in arrears to the Municipality for rates and service charges for a period of three months or longer.” At the Rustenburg Municipality however, no punitive measures whatsoever seem to be applied - in fact, allegations that practices such as the above have been going on, have been constantly denied and dismissed. So, how about these figures - all of which are owed to the Rustenburg Local Municipality: R102 897.63; R177 577.12; R161 036.00; wait for it: R342 110.68; R72 308.58; R162 569.74; R98 278.98; R83 546.81; R39 140.50; R127 659.71; R90 364.26; wait for it: R270 134.01; R47 398.90; R163 367.61; R179 050.81; R63 842.15; R102 131.84; and finally - almost laughable - R10 053.83.
So the obvious question to the Rustenburg Municipality, without any beating about the bush: Is Rustenburg Herald correct in assuming that all these Cllrs and MMCs in arrears are illegally posing as Councillors and unlawfully enjoying the benefits of their positions at the RLM? Our second question Sir/Madam: When can we expect to hear an announcement by the Rustenburg Municipality on when these Councillors and MMCs who have disqualified themselves will be dismissed? And yes, incidentally - we were wondering - were these Councillors and MMC’s water and electrical services also terminated with remotely the same urgency?
