Enraged business owners demand what is owed to them

By Emily Setona

QWAQWA – After numerous futile engagements with MAPWater going back and forth trying to get monies owed to them for services rendered, local businessowners of Maluti – A – Phofung (MAP) resolve to settle this matter as a collective.

A group of enraged businessmen and women met at Phuthadithjaba’s Freedom Square on 4 October to discuss how they can best work together to ensure that Maluti – A – Phofung local municipality’s water entity MAPWater is held accountable for monies owned for services rendered that are still not paid for long after the legal thirty-day period that is stipulated by government’s procurement processes.According to Moeketsi Mphuthi the entity owes him money for a job that was procured from him in February of this year.

“I’m here because we are fighting for outstanding monies owed to us for different services that we rendered to MAPWater. I for one provided MAPWater with printing paper sometime in February, I think the first week of February and I haven’t been paid to date. The challenge here is that seemingly MAPWater as an entity is about to be disbanded. However, this decision was made without considering what kind of repercussions this would have for us businesspeople who’ve done work for this entity.”

“When we go to demand our monies from MAPWater we are told that we cannot get paid, and they direct us to the local municipality and the municipality does not entertain our problems. During the water tankers strike the provincial government had promised to send representatives every two weeks to make sure that they resolve the challenges that MAPWater is facing, that decision had given us a lot of hope because we thought that our grievances would be heard and dealt with, but unfortunately, it didn’t happen like that. We are now forced to exercise our constitutional right to picket and have a peaceful demonstration where we will demand what is owed to us because we are being sent from pillar to post with no luck,” Mphuthi said in an interview with The Guard.

Lehlohonolo Kgalema who is the businessman leading this collective said that the main purpose of this gathering is to recover the money that is owed to them by the government entities particularly the municipality on behalf of MAPWater.

“It’s been quite a while that we’ve been waiting for our monies, but no money is coming. It has become very painful that we must form such organisations for us to get our monies. The resolution that we have taken is one that is going to be unpopular, we have decided that we are going to be visiting the municipality, we will go to the municipal manager’s office, we will go and sit with him until our matters are resolved. To be more specific, up until we get paid,” Coach said to this publication.In an interview with The Guard the CEO of MAPWater Willie Lefora said the following,

“Since September of 2023 the municipality communicated to us as the board of MAPWater that our powers and functions will be performed by the municipality, so since that time we haven’t been receiving revenue from the municipality. I remember in the winter of this year, businesspeople responsible for water tanks marched to the municipality and some of them received contracts that they will be paid their outstanding monies in six-month payments but if I’m not mistaken, they only received three-month payments.

Disgruntled business people of Maluti-a-Phofung gathered at Freedom square because of monies owed to them by MAPWater.

The community comes to us and still expects us to assist with water and sewerage service provision, but we are without tools of trade and any resources, we have no monies coming to MAPWater. As far as I know the municipality is in charge of the water provision programmes that they requested from us, and they have gone into seven day or fourteen-day contracts with water tank owners. We struggle so much to attend to pipe bursts and any problem with water service infrastructure because the municipality has rendered us powerless and without any money.”

During a suppliers’ engagement roadshow that was held in MAP on 6, 7 and 8 December 2023 the Chief Accountant Expenditure Diakanyo Khampepe said for businesses to do business with the municipality and eventually get paid for their services, they must comply with all the requirements necessary.“Businesspeople must understand that when they enter a contract with the municipality their business must be compliant.

The municipality pays businesses within 30 working days. Business owners need to make sure that their businesses are compliant and have no outstanding documents in their procurement documents. When this happens the payment process is hindered because then as the pay master, I must communicate with the relevant departments in the supply chain to see where the process might have gone wrong,” Khampepe said while addressing business people by then.