Thank you, Chair. If the Minister can't hear this I am willing to repeat it. Regulation 6.7.1 of the Disaster Response Directions refers to the legislative functions that municipalities have to continue fulfilling during lockdown, in particular, revenue collection is mentioned. From presentations by the SA Local Government Association and some of the metros, it is evident that municipalities suffered a collapse in revenue collection during the first month of lockdown.
The question is: Did the Minister, or the Command Council, take into account the inability of businesses to pay municipal rates before deciding on the government's lockdown strategy and, in particular, before deciding to promulgate the restrictions that apply under Level 4 lockdown? Thank you. The MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL
AFFAIRS: Thank you very much. First of all, I think we must all remember that the lockdown was not something that was planned in that there would have been plans for the lockdown, because the lockdown was occasioned by the fast rate of infection. You would have heard the Minister - not, maybe today, but some other time - saying before the lockdown that our figures were doubling between two days and three days - the numbers were doubling. So, that occasioned the lockdown, and there was no time to plan for all these things in terms of what would happen if lockdown were to happen. This was really about trying to make sure that we were not overwhelmed by the infection when our health services were not quite ready. But we have acknowledged that the municipalities are not going to be able to collect revenue as they would have done had there been no pandemic. This is because it is not just the lockdown, but also the fact that everyone ... I mean, even some of the malls were saying that they were not able to pay because some of their tenants were not working. So we have acknowledged that municipalities are not going to be able to pay or to collect sufficient revenue. Also, even people who have not been at work will probably not be able to ... [Inaudible.] ... for electricity ... [Inaudible.] ... they were not working. It is for that reason, for instance, that we went to government and pleaded that there should be some way of looking at municipalities in the package that the President was going to announce, and then he announced that.