Mayoral Committee Member, Rory Riordan, said the municipal debt relief was part of the municipality’s long-standing assistance to the poor programme which provides a basket a free services to poor households.
Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, Riordan said: "The situation when we became councillors a year ago was that a household with a joint income of less than two state pensions (approximately R3 000) received the benefit. This means that 80 000 families qualified at the time."
He said they took a look at the system and while the "outcome was great as so many already received these free municipal services, there were major challenges how the system was being administered."
Riordan said people had to apply for the Assistance-to-the-Poor, provide supporting letters from their minister of religion or others to state that their application was true and correct. They had to provide proof of income and officials were sent out to go and check. Ward Councillors were also approached for their opinion on the household.
"It meant that 9000 to 10 000 families were on a waiting list awaiting approval for services they were clearly entitled to. Auditing staff had to go all over town with vehicles to check the truthfulness of the applications, costing us R60 million a year to administer and at the end of the day we still had a waiting list of more than 9 000 people which was plainly very frustrating for them and very inappropriate," he said.
"We moved from the old system to a system where people automatically obtains Assistance-to-the-Poor subsidies if the municipal valuation of their house is R100 000 and below. This gives us a system where we are in complete control and we do not need R60 million a year to administer it," he said..
Riordan said the municipality also has a Debt Relief programme for households with income not exceeding R20 000 as well as various property rates rebates for the elderly, people with disabilities, non-governmental organizations amongst others.
