A recent government directive on local authorities’ debt collection mechanisms has decided that broke councils should become even broker.
The ban on renewing or signing new contracts with RedForce Debt Collectors is sold as protection for citizens. What it really does is strip away one of the few tools left that keeps many towns from financial collapse.
The Ministry says RedForce has created “economic and political challenges.”
RedForce is not gentle, but it gets results. It recovers millions in unpaid rates and utility bills every year. That is money that pays for water purification in Keetmanshoop, rubbish collection in Okahandja, and streetlight repairs in Otjiwarongo.
Remove that revenue and these towns will be left with nothing but bigger arrears and longer queues of angry residents demanding services councils cannot afford to provide.
The reality is most municipal and village councils are already on the edge. Tsumeb had to delay road maintenance this year because it ran out of funds. Mariental has been carrying unpaid water accounts for years. Some rural village councils can barely make payroll. In this environment, the arrears RedForce recovers are not just an accounting line. They are the difference between a working borehole and a week without water.
Take away this collection channel and three outcomes are likely:
1. Government bailouts — unlikely given the Treasury’s fiscal squeeze.
2. Higher tariffs for residents who already pay.
3. Service collapse as councils cut maintenance and stall projects.
Utility debt is not a victimless problem. When one household refuses to pay for water or electricity, another household pays more to make up the shortfall.
The Ministry’s decision shifts that burden onto the same pensioners and small businesses who already keep the system afloat.
If the problem is RedForce’s methods, the solution is regulation and oversight. Audit them. Set strict compliance rules. Publish monthly recovery and complaint figures. Do not dismantle the system with nothing to replace it.
This directive will push more councils into insolvency — not because residents cannot pay, but because political optics won out over the work of fixing the process.
The Ministry should publish the recovery rates. Show the before-and-after numbers for towns that use RedForce versus those that do not. Make the complaint records public.
If the data backs the ban, then the policy stands. If not, then the Ministry will have to explain to paying citizens why their bills are going up to cover someone else’s water and lights.
* Briefly is a weekly column that is opinionated and analytical. It sifts through the noise to make sense of the numbers, trends and headlines shaping business and the economy with insight, wit and just enough scepticism to keep things interesting. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE NOT OUR OWN, we simply relay them as part of the conversation.
