The Makhado Municipality denied this week that it is cash-strapped after it was unable to make overtime payments on time last month.

Almost a month after the initial media enquiry, municipal spokesperson Mr Louis Bobodi responded on Tuesday by saying “we are still able to pay overtime.”

Rumour had it that municipal employees threatened with strike action at the beginning of November because of the municipality’s failure to pay their overtime on time. To this, Bobodi said there was never any threat of a strike action but admitted that there was a problem with last month’s payment of overtime.

“Indeed we could not pay them on Friday, 11 November as we were offline, but we had to pay them on 14 November,” Bobodi said. Municipal officials qualify for payment of 40 hours overtime per month.

As for residents' claims that service delivery was hampered by this late payment as municipal officials refused to attend to complaints, especially with regard to electricity problems, Bobodi said: “There is no truth that any of our officials were unable to discharge their responsibilities because of overtime payment problems.”

Similar claims by the public that municipal officials refused to work were made in October when members of the municipality’s after-hours call centre in Eltivillas, an essential service, abandoned their posts out of apparent protest against the lack of overtime payment.

In this case, Bobodi confirmed that the staff did indeed abandon their post, but did not state why they had abandoned their offices. Bobodi indicated at that stage that “we are busy investigating as to what had happened to the person who was on duty, and appropriate action will be taken, based on the findings.”