City of Joburg mayor Dada Morero has repudiated allegations that R4 billion meant for Johannesburg Water is missing, maintaining that the funds have been allocated to deal with the City’s general financial obligations for service delivery on Monday, 15 September 2025.
This comes after the head of the Department for Water and Sanitation and co-chair of the water and sanitation work stream of the Presidential Group, Sean Phillips accused the City of sweeping more than R4 billion out of its water’s accounts.
Responding to water supply issues – following a week of violent protests in Coronationville and Westbury, where residents have faced prolonged water outages due to unpaid contractors, and stalled infrastructure projects, Morero said billions are not missing.
Last week frustrated residents were greeted with rubber bullets and tear gas by police for protesting.
“The R4 billion is not missing; it is money that has to be used for the entire City of Johannesburg.
“We have to pay salaries, maintain parks, roads signals from all the money. It is a balancing act on how we spend our budget,” said Morero at the Alexander Park Reservoir in Kensington.
On 2 September, during a water and sanitation oversight parliamentary sitting, Phillips said Joburg Water’s financial capacity to execute critical infrastructure projects as “severely compromised.”
“The City of Joburg has swept more than R4 billion out of Johannesburg Water’s accounts and not put them back. This has resulted in a situation where many contracts have come to a halt because the contractors haven’t been paid,” said Phillips.
Morero indicated that together with Treasury, they were now set to ring-fence a percentage of rates, taxes and general income into the water coffers for infrastructure. He suggested that illegal connections is a big factor in water supply challenges.
“We are going to have a meeting with JMPD to get them to be consistent in the programme of cut offs. They do it for two days and then people reconnect. It will help us in terms of water demand, there is a lot it will help with current problems with water.
“We hope our discussions with JMPD will give us the results we need,” Morero said.
