City responds on south billing crisis
According to the city it's normal for meters to clock over, unless it is an abnormal clock over
JOHANNESBURG SOUTH – Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations Management, Stan Maphologela, addressed assertions there’s a crisis with the billing system and no one knows how to fix it.
The worst affected by this billing crisis are the poor said the councillors.
“The city has a vast range of customers, all charged differently and with different billing frequencies,” said Maphologela.
It is misrepresentation to suggest that the city is issuing inflated bills without putting the matter in context, let alone explaining what constitutes an inflated bill or ”exaggerated and unexplained bills”.
“The rationale behind the step tariff should not be interpreted as attempts to bleed dry an already overburdened ratepayer.
”The fact is that water and electricity are scarce resources in South Africa, and Johannesburg is not immune to the burden of source cost from entities such as Eskom and Rand Water,” said Maphologela.
“However, usage is not the only factor in increased bills; incorrect reading, clock-over meter (faulty meters) or estimated reading can also result in misread bills.
”Bills are also impacted by estimations.
“Bylaws allow the city to only estimate the account for a period three months.
”This means the city is forced to send a meter reader to the customer’s property to capture actual readings from the meter, and reverse all the estimated readings on the customer’s account to ensure accuracy of a bill.
”A clock over is when the metering digits have reached the last 99 999 digits and results in the start of the meter reading from a lower reading again.
”There are essentially two types of clock overs, one where the current reading is smaller than the previous reading and the other when a reading starts again.”
According to Maphologela, if the customer’s bill is high due to a faulty meter or clock over, it is incumbent upon the customer to report it to the city.
”It is normal for meters to clock over, unless it is an abnormal clock over; if the bill is still in line it should not be a problem,” he said.
”If the bill is not correct and the meter readings do not make sense, the customer will have to request that a metering test be done, to ascertain if the meter is faulty or not.
”Another element is the fact that we need to further factor in the reality that a spike or increase in customer bills is also a result of the annual tariff increase on all services that came into effect annually.”
