Increased city tariffs across the board stretch residents’ budgets to breaking point

July 1 saw the introduction of increased tariffs across the board for city entities.

In explaining these, Nyaniso Jeku, on behalf of the city, says these are, “Legislated property tax, levied based on the value of the property. Water and electricity are charged based on a sliding scale; meaning the more you use, the more you will pay.”

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Julia Fish from JoburgCAN, an Outa initiative, says, “Residents are feeling the squeeze across the board. High interest rates, double taxation, and the above-inflation costs for tariffs are simply an unaffordable avalanche heading for households. There is no relief. If you try and make changes to save money, like lower your consumption, you now get slapped with a fixed fee for prepaid, or charged on property value, not consumption for sanitation. The City is tone deaf to the pleas sent out during the IDP process, and people will either stop paying, illegally connect, or go without essential things like food to cover their bills; nobody has an extra 12,7% lying around to simply hand over.”

Electricity

Speaking about the City Power increases for prepaid electricity users, as explained on Page 3, Ward 117 councillor Tim Truluck said, “Be prepared for a double whammy shock when you buy your first electricity voucher of each month as the R230 surcharge is deducted on top of the 12.7% annual increase.” He says, “City Power is technically bankrupt – its debts are around R20b and it is losing about R500m to R1b a month.

But it is one of those ‘too big to fail’ entities and the city has set aside R9.4b from the 2024/25 budget to cover their losses. They are desperate for money.”

Georgina Guedes, a local resident says, “It’s always a bit of a mid-year kick in the teeth when the tariffs increase. I understand the economic environment and the challenges at Eskom, but 12.7% for electricity really hurts when that’s way ahead of any inflation-related raise that a person might have received, never mind the general cost of living. The refuse and water increase are a little easier to stomach, but they’re still not great in light of the service interruptions we’ve had in the past year. We’ve had to pay for refuse removal in months when hardly any refuse removal took place. I hope that these bodies are using their increased tariffs to improve service delivery in the coming year.”

Also read: Emmarentia residents take to the streets demanding water supply

Water

• 6 KL of water: Free
• 6-10 KL of water: R26.20/KL
• All water costs above 6 KL increase by 7.7 %

Prepaid water costs are slightly lower than metered billing and sanitation costs for indigent customers is covered in full by the city.

Refuse 

Property rates 

First R 300 000 of the value of all residential properties is excluded from rating. Where a property owner owns more than one residential property, only one property will be granted the R 300 000 threshold. The rest of the properties will only benefit from a R 15 000 exclusion.

Residential
2023/24          2024/25             Increase
0.008791         0.009125           3.8%

Business and commercial
2023/24            2024/25             Increase
0.021978           0.022813            3.8%

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