EDITOR – Please note that as of December 1, I have implemented an automated service delivery notification system (ASDN), similar to the EMM’s system monitoring payments (where I underpaid my account by R13 paying on a guesstimate when EMM’s invoicing system was down and then received a final termination notice), to monitor and assess service delivery by the EMM.
ALSO READ: Local councillor shares service delivery insights with public
ASDN will automatically issue notices when service delivery failures occur.
I use the plural of failures as I have not had only one failure per month in the last 12 months.
These notices, riddled with acronymic lingo, the bureaucratic language of choice, so as to make it understandable, are automated and generated by an advanced and independent computer system, focused on service delivery only and generated at a reasonable cost of R124 per notice.
It is purely designed at ensuring improved service delivery in the FEMM, ostensibly a first world aerotropolis where the future is bright albeit dark more often than not (FEMM – futuristic EMM, or of you like, the F may be substituted with a four-letter word).
The ASDN was necessitated by the implementation of an exaggerated estimate (EE) billing system by the EMM for services not rendered in the FEMM.
ALSO READ: Have your say on water service by-laws for CoE
The level of service delivery in the FEMM has deteriorated to the extent that the EMM is now not even capable of reading metres for consumables it only delivers to its clients intermittently, if at all. It then simply levies EE’s.
By way of example, I now pay more for electricity than I did before the installation, at great expense, of an electric solar system generating more than 90% of my monthly electricity requirements.
It is therefore only fair, in circumstances where the Constitutional Court held that taxpayers are not permitted to withhold payment in the event of poor, bad or non-existing services by a municipality that I be permitted to implement the ASDN.
The EE billing system has now become unreasonable to the extent that the inhabitants of FEMM do not receive essential services, cannot complain about it, cannot refuse to pay for the non-delivery of services (a most basic principle in ordinary free commerce) and is compelled to pay an EE, to the EMM even though such services are not rendered.
Surely, I have a constitutional right to live and not be tortured and cheated by the FEMM.
ALSO READ: Letter: Reader shocked by state of Cresslawn
Herewith, therefore, a summary of the notices issued for December 2022:
• EE – R5 000
• 16 x ASDN notices for failure to restore electricity supply within one hour after the termination of load shedding – R1 984
• 3 x ASDN notices for not restoring electricity supply for more than 12 hours after the termination of load shedding – R372
• 4 x ASDN notices for failure to collect refuse on time – R496
• 8 x ASDN notices for daily notices to collect refuse where refuse was not collected for eight consecutive days – R992
• 4 x ASDN notices for water supply not exceeding three drops per second – R496
• 16 x ASDN notices for potholes left unattended for three months or more – R1 984
• 7 x ASDN notices for spotting rodents bigger than our cat feasting on uncollected refuge – R868
Total – R7 192.
According to the ASDN the EMM owes me R2 192 against the EE unfairly levied for living in the FEMM.
In light of the fact that the EMM continues to trade in insolvent circumstances, and as a responsible citizen, I shall not insist on payment.
Let’s just call it quits.
FRUSTRATED KEMPTON RESIDENT
EDITOR’S COMMENT – The letter was sent to the media department for the City of Ekurhuleni for comment.
Comment was requested by February 6.
At the time of going to print, no comment was received from the CoE.
Also follow us on:
