Municipal manager Themba Goba said on Monday in an internal letter seen by TimesLIVE:"The municipality is able to pay salaries with or without equitable share and will continue to pay salaries without any challenges. Yes, there is a delay and system challenge experienced by National Treasury in paying equitable share to our municipality. The municipality however has various sources of revenue that has always assisted it to pay salaries.
Tlharipe said the financial and liquidity problems come from"low levels of the collection of rates from our residents".The municipality has to restructure to stay afloat, including reviewing all their contracts with external contractors, Tlharipe said. "The way things are, we will not able to sustain the institution … The meeting is going to sit to review municipal contracts before the end of this week."
DA ward councillor Doneven Cloete said the employees went to the office to make a"statement to check if they will receive their salaries"., in 2016/17 the municipality only had enough money available to cover a month of operating expenses and just over a quarter of the budget is spent on salaries and wages.
Just over 30c in every rand is collected from the central government and the rest is generated locally.