The Municipal Council of Thekwini has passed a plan to run the Special Debt Relief Programme, which was closed in January this year, the purpose of which was to help reduce the burden on the residents of Thekwini from the various debts they have with the municipality.
About R112.3 million is the total debt of the residents of Durban and the surrounding areas, which has been identified from the identification of their 154 debtor accounts, which include electricity, water, living expenses and so on.
The Mayor of Thekwini Municipality, Councilor Cyril Xaba, urged customers who could not benefit from this program to use this opportunity of this program, which is already open now and will be closed at the end of August this year.
“When we launched this program from May to June last year with the aim of reducing the burden by 50% on the residents of Durban who owed the municipality at the end of January last year, many residents and the different agencies we work with urged us to extend this program so that it can continue to help others. So since we are a municipality that listens to the opinions of the people, we felt it was important to listen to that call, and we ran the duration of this program from November last year to January this year to help reduce the burden on our residents and businesses,” he said.
Xaba said that by continuing to consult with the community and customers – who have been complaining about being left outside even when we extended it a second time, it forced them to make other efforts to empathize with them so that no one is left behind.
“We have listened to the complaints of our residents, and we are happy that we are now coming back with this program that will help them reduce the debt burden they are facing, so we urge them to take action to benefit from it now,” he said.
When this program was closed in January this year, it had helped the municipality to cancel the debts of Durban residents of more than R515 million, which helped more than 4,500 residents.
The Mayor urged people to hurry up to seize this opportunity, visit the offices of the Municipality of Thekwini near them so that they can take advantage of this program before it closes.