The Tshwane municipality has pulled out of sponsoring the Metro FM music awards.

The 10th annual ceremony, which was set to take place next month, won't be happening anymore because of the municipality's financial troubles.

This comes a year after the radio station and the municipality signed a three-year contract for the city to host the awards and a mere six weeks after the city denied that it was in a financial crisis.

The radio station has been forced to take out a R1.2-billion overdraft to cover costs amounting to R700-million to Eskom, Rand Water and others.

Mayor Gwen Ramokgopa will tackle the cash-flow problems by embarking on a cost cutting exercise.

A statement released by the SABC confirmed the radio station has had to postpone the awards and is currently negotiating sponsorship with alternative potential partners to stage the event early next year.

In an attempt to justify the council's decision, Tshwane corporate spokesperson Brenda Mpitsang said: "We want to suspend the arrangement and concentrate on service delivery. When our finances look better, we will reconsider."

"There is a national recession. That is not a foreign thing. Internally we have had to revisit our budgets and a lot of things had to be rechannelled. Obviously we are trying to be as prudent as possible," she said.

According to Mpitsang the decision was made a month ago and the station was informed two weeks ago.

Previous ceremonies were held in Port Elizabeth and Durban.


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