In the last five years, the city’s finances have collapsed, residents are over-taxed, rates and tariffs have increased at a predatory rate, default on payment of rates and tariffs have nearly trebled since 2016, 30% of all electricity bought from Eskom is stolen because the TMPD is dysfunctional, substations explode and go up in flames as never before, power failures last days because of a lack of maintenance, 24% of water is lost because of leaking water reticulation, residents receive water poisoned with untreated effluent, the debt burden is suffocating, the salary bill is mushrooming and we’ve been downgraded to junk!
Salaries and contracted services (the latter municipal services normally rendered by a municipality in-house that has been contracted out) together form the single biggest expenditure item at 40% of budget – as staff costs.
As can be seen, the city incurs a lopsided 40% (R 16 billion) in staff costs to spend 5% (R 2 billion) on service delivery. All other heads of expenditure are fixed costs that do not vary depending on the level of service delivery.