Pretoria residents fume at excessive municipal bills

Residents in Pretoria have voiced their frustrations over excessively high municipal bills.

One resident, Tjaart Venter who usually has a monthly bill ranging between R2,000 to R3,000, received a bill of R65,105 for the end of July and has to pay at least 30% before Friday.

“I paid every month, even during the lockdown. I did have an outstanding amount of about R10,000 but that does not explain the new bill.

“I do not know where this amount comes from. The meter reading was incorrectly captured during May, and after numerous attempts to get it corrected, this has not happened,” Venter said.

Resident Matz Dieter said he paid his bill every month for 20 years but was served with an R10,000 bill in arrears “out of nowhere”.

Mariette Malherbe said by her calculation, her bill was at least 60% more than her usual bill in July.

“I am not working, I have just lost my husband and in July, I received a bill that was about 60% more than normal.

“I understand the rates were supposed to be about 6.3% but surely mine is too high. Sitting with this bill in the middle of Covid-19 is very difficult,” she said.

Resident Hlophe Skhosana said although she had not received her monthly statement since March she paid what she believed to be an average amount monthly.

“The municipality is ripping us off because we paid, but now we have such huge bills. Our electricity bill is just too much and no one is helping us when we report this and yet cut off dates are set.”

Former local ward councillor Yolanda Duvenhage said she had received more than 500 complaints from residents over unusual high billing.

Duvenhage said this issue was even more “complex” with the metro serving residents with demand letters with cut off dates while credit control offices struggled to operate.

“This has to be one of the first times as a councillor I experienced such high complaints over incorrect billing,” she said.

“It is not just residents but businesses which had not operated during lockdown who were also left with these huge bills.”

Second on the residents’ complaints was the newly implemented fixed water and sanitation connection charge introduced by the metro in July.

Duvenhage said the main problem the residents had was over lack of awareness of the restructuring of the billing system.

Two other former local councillors Siobhan Muller and Marnette Sutherland also reported a high number of complaints over high billing and the new fixed charge.

Pretoria East resident and engineer Phillip Nel said the new fixed charge was part of the metro’s restructuring billing system that is used in cases of property with a borehole that only uses municipal water in cases of emergency, but they do deliver waste water to the sewer system.

“The fixed charge pays for having a water connection, servicing reservoirs and the reticulation, the meter read, etc.”

Metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the new structure allowed for a network availability charge to enable the metro to do better maintenance.

“This is a fixed charge for all households, including sectional title units, which is not related to consumption. It also includes the first 9kl usage per 30 days period. This structure is a more just allocation of cost as the networks maintenance cost is related to pipe length, and not consumption,” he said.

“The network availability charges are R120 per 30 days for water and R70 per 30 days for sanitation, excluding VAT.”

Mashigo, however, said customers with properties valued below R150,000 were not charged.

On complaints about high billing Mashigo urged residents to visit the metro’s Tshwane customer service to inquire about their bills.

“We will, however, as the metro looks into the issue with the relevant departments.”

Mashigo said residents could check via balances and also lodge complaints using the WhatsApp line 087 153 1001.

This article first appeared on Rekord and was republished with permission.

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