With water, sanitation, property and electricity rates going up, residents will no longer receive their first 6 000 litres (kl) of water free.
This was revealed in MMC for Finance Dr Rabelani Dagada’s first budget speech on 23 May.
Increases to electricity will be 2.28 per cent, refuse removal sees an increase of 6.1 per cent and property rates will increase by 6.2 per cent.
Water, sewage and sanitation services will see a 12.2 per cent increase.
“It is important to note that 10.2 per cent of this [water, sewage and sanitaion] was directly passed on to the City by Rand Water, leaving the City with a marginal 2 per cent to cover our operational costs,” Dagada said.
The decision that households would no longer receive 6kl free water did not come as a surprise. Executive Mayor Herman Mashaba previously announced that from 1 July, only indigent households would receive free water while non-indigent households would pay for all of their water. The new changes will allow for indigent households to receive between 10kl and 15kl of free water depending on their score on the City of Johannesburg’s Poverty Index.
Mashaba said that households could expect to pay an estimated increase of R42.84 on their monthly water bill.
Dagada added that with 87.7 per cent of the budget being dependent on revenue raised through these increased rates, the City would be able to generate R320 million more. “It will help to bring water and electricity services to communities that have never had them before,” he said.
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