By Zukile Majova
Thousands of learners in schools around Pietermaritzburg are attending school with no water and no electricity.
Where pit toilets have been removed but not replaced, learners are unable to go to school at all because there are no ablution facilities.
The municipality said the schools owe it a collective R32-million – a portion of the R7-billion owed to the municipality by households, businesses and government properties.
Despite the schools being responsible for a pittance of the total bill, uMsunduzi Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla said the council took a decision to cut municipal services to the schools.
Some of the schools did not have piped water but were receiving bulk water from water tankers contracted to the municipality.
The schools are not Model C schools or private schools but are Section 21 schools, meaning they have been designated as no-fee schools.
Such schools are declared no-fee schools after a government survey confirms that the parents are unemployed, indigent or surviving on social grants.
But Thebolla insisted the schools could afford to pay.
“They all get grants and part of that grant is supposed to be used to pay for municipal services.”
The municipality has already cut water and electricity to the provincial head office of the Department of Education.
The mayor told Newzroom Afrika that they were also pursuing small businesses like car washes and laundromats that generate profits from using municipal water but fail to pay.
KZN education spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi said eThekwini Metro recently cut water to schools but the department intervened and paid the bill and would do the same in Pietermaritzburg.
“We are working around the clock to ensure that come next week, we will have the situation back to normality.”
Pictured above: Msunduzi mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla insists poor schools must settle their water and electricity bills.
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