On what seemed to be a happy, peaceful easter Sunday morning, at around 08:00 on Sunday 04 April 2021, trouble struck. A large transformer and part of the electrical infrastructure of the Eskom lines supplying the Harrismith district malfunctioned and burned. Because of the neglect and lack of maintenance by the Maluti-a-Phofung municipality to their own infrastructure and not having any circuit protectors in place, the damage carried through to the municipality power infrastructure and some the the municipal lines and transformers also burned badly.
As per usual, Eskom quickly jumped on the project to repair their own infrastructure, and before lunch time on Tuesday, the Eskom supplied areas were back on and had electricity supply. The Municipality however, were not as quick to react. In fact, today, at 14:00 on Friday 9 April 2021, almost a full 5 days later, a contractor has not yet even been appointed by the municipality to fix their infrastructure.
There are even some of the previous contractors that did not even want to quote the Maluti-a-Phofung municipality because their work from many months ago, has not yet even been paid. Adding insult to injury, it is a well known fact that this particular municipality already owes Eskom in excess of R6 billion, having not paid a single cent for electricity supplied by Eskom to the Municipality since 2014. The money collected by the Maluti-a-Phofung municipality for electricity, rates and taxes is not even enough to just cover the exorbitant salaries of the municipality staff, which is also more than three times bigger than is needed.
It is clear that the corrupt Municipality has all but completely collapsed, yet is still being kept open by National Government, so that the corrupt comrades could carry on looting the state funds for themselves. Residents have started taking to the National N3 highway in protest of the lack of service delivery by the incompetent and bankrupt Maluti-a-Phofung municipality.
