The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Dawid Kruiper has successfully secured the adoption of a critical motion in Council to ringfence revenue generated from water and electricity services, ensuring these funds are protected and reinvested directly into maintaining and expanding essential infrastructure.
This decisive step marks a major breakthrough in restoring accountability and safeguarding service delivery for residents.
Water and electricity are the backbone of a functional municipality. Yet, communities in Upington and surrounding areas continue to endure frequent outages, failing infrastructure and declining reliability. Aging water networks and significant electricity distribution losses point to a system under strain, worsened by the misallocation of funds meant for these core services.
The DA’s motion directly addresses this failure by ensuring that money paid by residents for water and electricity is used for its intended purpose, nothing else.
The adopted motion compels the municipality to:
- Account separately for all water and electricity revenue;
- Allocate these funds exclusively to infrastructure operation, maintenance, refurbishment, and expansion;
- Strengthen financial transparency through dedicated cost centres and improved reporting;
- Submit quarterly reports on revenue, expenditure, and infrastructure losses;
- Develop a comprehensive turnaround plan within 60 days to secure long-term sustainability.
The motion further mandates engagement with Provincial and National Treasury to align with best practices, while placing a clear responsibility on the Executive Mayor and Municipal Manager to enforce compliance and prevent future financial mismanagement.
The DA welcomes the support received from across Council in adopting this motion that will go a long way towards halting further infrastructure decay and managing long-term infrastructure costs.
Ringfencing revenue for water and electricity services is not merely an administrative adjustment, it is a governance imperative. The DA will closely monitor implementation of the motion and remains committed to driving accountability and ensuring the delivery of reliable services to all residents.