According to Randburg Sun reader Jacci Babich, residents are frustrated with billing estimations, and has asked how consumers will know by how much consumption has decreased.
Babich wrote to the newspaper asking how consumer usage is determined when no meters have been read.
“When we telephoned to get municipal billing details in order to pay, an automated message informed us that no water meters were read in September due to training new meter readers,” she said.
Stan Maphologela, City spokesperson, explained that the 3.5 per cent consumer demand reduction was recorded based on meter readings from the City’s bulk supply points like reservoirs and towers.
“We are measuring what goes out of these supply points and arrive at a point of determining a general increase or decrease in demand for an area supplied.
“The meters linked to individual consumer accounts give a sense of how much each household or property has used and not a general or average sense of how all other consumers combined have been using water,” he said.
Level 2 water restrictions are still in place in the City of Johannesburg with Rand Water supplying 15 per cent less water to reservoirs.
But according to Johannesburg Water, consumers have only reduced their usage by no more than 4.6 per cent since the restrictions were put in place.
“The City initially responded with a reduction of 4.6 per cent but has regressed to a 3.5 per cent and then a 1.2 per cent reduction in consumption per week since the announcement of stricter level 2 water restrictions. This is far below the target and a cause for concern,” MMC for Environmental and Infrastructure Services, Anthony Still, said.
According to various residents and ward councillors, some consumers are still not adhering to the restrictions, some still irrigating their gardens with municipal water.
Still previously said that the insufficient decrease in water consumption in the City so far indicates a lack of appreciation for the precarious position the City and the region are in.
” It seems that water for gardening, which is the most discretionary of all usages, has not been sufficiently curtailed. As stated before, more than 40 per cent of potable water in Gauteng is used for gardening purposes,” he said.
The Department of Water and Sanitation recently said that people should continue saving water as the recent rains didn’t have much effect on the worrying dam levels.
