Data cleanup uncovers massive billing gaps in parts of Newcastle Municipality, says municipal manager
The Newcastle Municipality says it has found that thousands of households are failing to pay their municipal bills.
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Newcastle municipal manager Zamani Mcineka says the municipality’s ongoing debt collection and data-cleansing drive has exposed urgent structural failures in the city’s billing system, particularly in townships east of the CBD.
The follow-up findings come as Newcastle attempts to recover R2.3 billion in unpaid debt, which has left the Municipality with a monthly shortfall of more than R40 million.
The Debt Collection and Revenue Enhancement Drive, launched last week in Madadeni and Osizweni, aims to tackle what officials have described as a long-standing “culture of non-payment” that has severely strained service delivery.
The debt collection drive comes weeks after some Newcastle residents took to the streets to voice their concerns about billing issues.
According to Mcineka, the verification work on the ground has revealed a far deeper problem than anticipated in the area classified as Newcastle East.
“Out of 38,876 households that we were billing outside, only 5,715 households are paying for their services,” he said.
“We have not completed the process. We are still going there today.”
He said the findings forced the Municipality to confront misconceptions about who is unable to pay.
“Yes, I’ve always heard that people in the East are poor; I accept that,” he said. “However, we know that not all of those people are poor. Some of those people are taking chances with us.”
Mcineka said officials also encountered cases where employed residents were deliberately avoiding payment.
“Most of them are teachers, policemen, and nurses. They’re working in government, but those ones in the East are not paying,” he said.
“Others are hiding behind their grannies, their parents, who say the house is not in my name, yet they’re staying there.”
He added that another major challenge uncovered through the door-to-door campaign is the high number of properties still registered under deceased owners.
“We discovered that approximately 15,000 of those households were deceased estates,” Mcineka said.
Family disputes, missing title deeds, and high conveyancing fees have worsened the problem, leaving many households unable to transfer ownership or unwilling to take responsibility for arrears, he said.
“Others are paying, but they are concerned that the title deeds have not been transferred to themselves,” he said.
Solutions for Backlogs
To clear these backlogs, the council has approved the full write-off of debt for deceased estates once an heir is formally appointed. “That’s a decision that the council has taken,” Mcineka said. “We were also trying to clean our data.”
The Municipality plans to use the equitable share grant to help families finalise transfers.
“The equitable share grant is primarily meant for the municipality to assist those that cannot assist themselves,” he said. “It will be assisting us to know that you’ve got accurate billing.”
Mcineka believes the long-term gains will be significant. “It’s something that’s not going to yield good results sooner, but the next council will be celebrating,” he said.
“We will have clean data, we will have a clean billing system, and we will have a clean indigent register.”
He said the broader aim is both revenue recovery and fairness. “We are helping the people. We have to,” he said. “We’ll take from those that we are supposed to take… but we are also going to be assisting those who can’t.”