Thank you, Chairperson. Greetings, Minister, and thank you for your reply. The reason why I asked this question was that there are couple of newspaper articles which are fairly alarmist. I was wondering to what extent they are correct. For example, one said that many municipalities will be compelled to write off much of their arrears, because they could be considered reckless lenders in terms of the Act. Another said that, in terms of the Act, credit granters may not allow accounts to run wild, as it is the case in most municipalities at the moment, without realistic expectations of collection.
This is obviously a concern, because as you've indicated the law does apply to all municipalities. It's a bit of a concern perhaps that guidelines are only being prepared now, when the Act came into effect a couple months ago. Perhaps, it would have been advisable for the guidelines to have been produced in advance of the commencement date of the Act. A simple reading of the law suggests that all consumers who are not pay-as-you-go consumers have to have their creditworthiness checked. And, if people are not creditworthy, then credit cannot be advanced to them. So this is a major issue. The issue of bad debt ...