{"id":827390,"date":"2025-06-09T12:23:21","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T10:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=827390"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:21:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T07:21:51","slug":"joburg-to-take-money-from-property-sales-to-cover-debts-owed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/827390\/joburg-to-take-money-from-property-sales-to-cover-debts-owed\/","title":{"rendered":"Joburg to take money from property sales to cover debts owed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The City of Johannesburg has announced a &#8216;radical&#8217; debt collection project that will be coming after wealthy residential defaulters and businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The initiative will include a new process to get clearance certificates for property sales, which will see the city take what is owed from the proceeds of the sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Called &#8216;Project Lokisa&#8217;, the operation will be a large-scale revenue recovery project that will target the &#8220;worst offenders&#8221; who have been defaulting on their bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city said that it will have an intense focus on disconnecting illegal connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It identified the biggest defaulters in the metro, which include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Large electricity and water consumers with properties valued above R100 million;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>High valued residential properties valued at more than R5 million;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Commercial businesses;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Government departments and State-Owned Entities (SOEs).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The city said that under the project, it will introduce changes to the process of getting Clearance Certifications when sellers sell their properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This will ensure that the city does not lose money owed for municipal services by the seller when they finally put their property on sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA Clearance Certificate will be provided to the transferring attorney and the customer with a notice of the total amount owing above 90 days,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Attorneys will be given notice to sign an Acknowledgment of Debt (AOD), which will authorize direct payment to the city from the sale proceeds.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city urged all property owners and businesses to settle their outstanding accounts or alternatively make payment arrangements with the city to avoid disconnections and legal action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The debt-collection drive comes as the City of Joburg faces massive budget issues, with spending requirements putting the already massive R89 billion budget under extreme pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city wants to implement a 13.9% increase in water and sanitation, 12.41% in electricity, and 4.6% in property rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This puts additional burdens on Johannesburg residents, who are being asked to pay more without a guarantee of improved services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The increases also come at a time of economic hardship, high unemployment, and stagnant service delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the city has also been hit hard by residents not paying their bills and using illicit methods to bypass meters and billing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city has previously noted that thousands of &#8216;rich&#8217; residents are part of the problem, with debts piling up in affluent suburbs where meters have been tampered with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While resident owe billions of rands in unpaid bills, the City of Joburg itself is also billions of rands in debt to utilities like Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The City of Joburg is launching a new debt collection project targeting businesses and affluent residents, and debtors selling their homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":727664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[4280],"class_list":["post-827390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-city-of-joburg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827390"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827539,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827390\/revisions\/827539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}