Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero says the City will pay about R960 million to Rand Water this month while addressing financial pressures, outstanding debts and concerns over municipal accounts.
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The City of Johannesburg is expected to pay around R960 million to Rand Water this month to settle its account, Executive Mayor Dada Morero said, as the metro works to address its outstanding financial obligations.
In an interview on Newzroom Afrika, Morero said the City had made progress in managing its account with Rand Water, while acknowledging that bulk electricity costs from Eskom remained a major financial challenge.
"With water we are on par with Rand Water, we're really not having much issues. We are able to pay our current account without major challenges," Morero said.
''This month we will be paying around R960 million to sort out the Rand Water account," Morero said.
Morero said the City's immediate focus was to ensure that its accounts were brought up to date, particularly with Eskom, after financial pressures affected its ability to meet payment obligations.
"The bulk cost of bulk purchases, especially on electricity, is heavy on the city and we must come up front, but we still have a responsibility to keep up with those payments," he said.
He said Johannesburg was working towards clearing its outstanding Eskom obligations and hoped to focus on maintaining its current account once payments had been stabilised.
"The cost structure of Eskom is based on peak and non-peak hours, which affects how we manage our bulk purchases as the city," Morero said.
He said the City faced challenges because Eskom's tariff increases were not always aligned with municipal electricity tariffs approved by council.
"When they increase the tariff during peak hours, we still charge you the normal tariff, which is a challenge in itself because that cost has to be paid by the city to ensure that customers receive their electricity," he said.
Morero said the City was exploring alternatives to reduce bulk electricity costs and lessen the impact on residents.
On concerns over National Treasury's decision to halt funding to some municipalities, including Johannesburg, Morero said the matter had been resolved after engagements with Treasury.
He rejected suggestions that the City had passed an unfunded budget, saying Johannesburg's 2026/27 budget remained funded.
"The city has never passed any form of an unfunded budget, and that matter was rectified with National Treasury," Morero said.
He said Treasury had completed its assessment of the City's budget and had informed administrators that the issue of an unfunded adjustment budget had been closed.
"National Treasury has said it's satisfied and it has now closed that matter, including the 2026-2027 remains a funded budget," he said.
Morero said the City expected to receive its equitable share allocation after submitting signed acknowledgement letters from Eskom and Rand Water.
"The equitable share once received will then settle Eskom and Rand Water so that we can be able to put our accounts into current accounts and deal with the outstanding amounts that we owe to Eskom," he said.
Morero also said the City had submitted a reduction strategy to National Treasury outlining how it planned to deal with accumulated unauthorised expenditure.
"National Treasury expected us to give them a clear strategy on how we are going to finally complete," he said.
He said matters relating to investigations and consequence management would be tabled before council during its July meeting.
Morero also addressed the week-long disruption to waste collection, saying services had resumed after issues involving contractors and casual workers were resolved.
"Tuesday evening operations have actually started to deal with the backlog and hopefully in the next three days we should have cleared the backlog and be able to resume operations properly and continue with the waste collection," he said.
Morero apologised to residents affected by the disruption, saying casual workers were not employed directly by the City.
"We do apologise to our customers and clearly this was a result of some casual issues, and included in that has been issues of casual workers, but we've addressed contractors who have addressed casual workers to make it clear that casual workers are not employees of the city," he said.
He said the City had also introduced measures to strengthen oversight and reduce corruption in tender processes.
Morero said tenders above R5 million were subjected to an independent probity process to verify compliance with supply chain policies.
"We are confident that our processes are quite tight in terms of awarding of tenders in an attempt to reduce any form of corruption," Morero said.
However, he acknowledged that corruption remained a major challenge facing the municipality.
"We do agree that corruption remains one enemy number one that continues to affect the manner in which we function as a municipality, as a government, but we are sure where we are now the probity process has actually helped us a lot to reduce the impact of corruption in tender processes," he said.
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