Thembisa Shologu
MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Lebogang Maile says the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the revenue generation problems of municipalities in Gauteng.
Reflecting on key challenges experienced by municipalities as a result of COVID-19 on Wednesday 2 September, MEC Maile said due to coronavirus, municipalities have experienced revenue reduction in property rates, water supply and sanitation services and electricity including the billing problem
"Collectively, our municipalities under collected a revenue by roughly R2.6 billion in April alone, R2.4 billion in May, R2.2 billion in June and around R2 billion in July. 
"Meaning, in the four months period our municipalities have collectively lost more than R8.6 billion in revenue in Gauteng with Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane metros being the hardest hit.".  
Maile said the Gauteng government was working with its municipalities to develop and implement financial strategies that would enable revenue optimization and financial sustainability.
"We are also providing a multi-disciplinary team of revenue experts to strengthen revenue enhancement and debtors' management with the focus on having a positive impact on the liquidity of our municipalities.  
"In terms of financial management and viability of our municipalities  we have identified the following  notable challenges within our municipalities when it comes to issue of financial management and viability;  underspending on conditional grants, lack of funding on aging infrastructure,  low revenue base, growing unauthorised  irregular fruitless and wasteful expenditure,   increasing employee costs, non-payment for services and low collection rates including some of our municipalities adopting unfunded budgets," explained Maile. 
He noted that municipalities were gradually reporting to the MEC's office on the Unauthorised Irregular Fruitless Wasteful expenditure in terms of section 32 of the Municipal Finance Management (MFMA) Act.  
"Governance entails taking tough decisions amidst limited resources and competing priorities in order to ensure broader societal good and we are doing our utmost to ensure we strengthen and support our municipalities especially during this unprecedented period where municipalities are faced with serious service delivery issues and increasing demands while the fiscus is shrinking as revenue collection decreases," said MEC Maile.