Fochville and Carletonville area’s ratepayers hit by municipal account chaos

Ratepayers in various towns around the Merafong City Local Municipality are in anguish because the municipality’s financial system is, once again, in chaos.

The financial system was off from the end of December 2023 to May this year and no one could get an idea of how much they owed during this time. Although the system was supposed to be back up and running from around May, it became clear during the past week that this is certainly not the case.

According to Elmarie Hayes from Mimosa Street in Fochville, she and her husband have been struggling with their account for months.

“Our average monthly account was R5 700 and we continued to pay R6 000 during the time that the financial system was off,” she says.

Although the accounts that they received from Merafong showed, at first, that the municipality actually owed them money, their account dated July 31 suddenly showed that they were more than R190 000 in arrears. Hayes visited both the Fochville and Carletonville municipal offices, sent dozens of emails and made several calls to the municipality. Despite the fact that an official acknowledged that the huge outstanding account actually belonged to one of their neighbours, the problem has not yet been sorted out.

Pensioner gets account for more than R5 million!

In another shocking case, a pensioner from Carletonville Extension 9, Faith Grobler, received an outstanding account of R5.7m at the end of August. Although the municipality later acknowledged that this was a mistake, her current account is still more than R36 000, which is much higher that it has ever been.

“This is a crazy situation. She has been at the municipality several times to try to fix it, but she is trying again. I am being inundated by calls for billing because people are getting ridiculous bills. The site where you normally get the bills is also suspended for some reason. People cannot get their correct bills and are being charged huge amounts in interest for bills that are completely wrong,” complains Grobler’s ward councillor, Carlos Rebelo.

Meanwhile, another pensioner, Leonora Kriek from Adorp Street in Oberholzer, complains that even though she takes her own readings and sends it to the municipality, they still get it wrong on her account.

“The Municipal Finance Section is dealing with customers on a daily basis. The section tries
by all means to resolve queries of all the customers that contact or walk into the offices.
Customers are advised to provide the names of the officials who are not assisting them so
that a follow up can be made,” their spokesperson, Temba Fezani, answered.