The city of Johannesburg, South Africa, which is said to be Africa’s richest city due to its concentration of businesses and millionaires, needs 221 billion Rand ($12 billion) to catch up on maintenance and overdue upgrades across its collapsing road, power and water networks.
The city council discussed the shortfall late last month and detailed it in documents. It comes at a time when regular power outages — the result of distribution network breakdowns — hit large swathes of Johannesburg. Officials leave potholes unattended to for months and parts of the city had no water for as long as 11 days in March.
The work pileup “highlights significant risks to public safety, economic safety and the environment if not addressed,” the city said of the road network in the documents. Also, the document further added that “Ignoring the backlog could lead to deteriorating roads, unsafe bridges, flooding and increased accidents.”
The documents show that the city has missed its annual target for water infrastructure investment every year since at least 2008 and that its electricity utility, City Power, has “urgent needs for upgrades and replacement to ensure network reliability and safety,” Bloomberg reports.
A separate document, dated March 6, shows that the city is struggling with revenue collection from large customers, including government departments and companies, with 6.1 billion Rand of payments more than 90 days overdue.
