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City of Joburg Council Chambers.
Deputy Finance Minister Ashor Sarupen says national government is still working very closely with the City of Johannesburg, despite the leaking of a letter revealing the metro’s worsening financial situation.
In a strongly worded letter this week from Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, it emerged that creditors are owed R25 billion, while the municipality only has R3.9 billion in available cash.
Godongwana also instructed Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero to halt the implementation of a signed wage agreement with the South African Municipal Workers’ Union over the risk to both the city’s finances and the broader economy.
Sarupen says they are trying to remediate the situation.
“The Minister of Finance is engaging with the City of Johannesburg’s political leadership, but at a technical level there’s been even before, long before, consistent engagements at a technical level between the Treasury officials and the finance team in the City of Johannesburg about their finances, about their liquidity ratios, their cash aggregations, their collection rates which have been falling…and so it’s been an ongoing process to try to remediate and get the City of Johannesburg do what it’s supposed to do.”
COJ Financial Crisis | Calls for Joburg to be placed under administration:
