A leaking water meter has left Willem de Beer and his family in Randgate frustrated for almost half a year now.
De Beer said despite the family’s efforts to use water sparingly, they still get billed heavily, sometimes as high as R1 900, which he said they cannot afford.
“The problem is that the municipal workers who came out did not fix it properly. After four days it started leaking again and they never came back to fix it,” De Beer said.
What really frustrated him, De Beer said, was the fact that when he reported the issue to the municipality, he was told that his name would be on the list for repairs, but when he followed up because nobody came out to do the repairs, he was told that his name had not been on the list.
“One of my neighbours whose water meter was leaking had it fixed quickly, while I am told that there were no materials to fix it. This really is unfair,” he lamented.
“If we do not not pay, they switch it off. We had to borrow money just to keep the lights on. The billing does not make any sense because we do our laundry once a week, and we always try not to use a lot of water, but every month the water bill states that we used more than 1 000 litres of water,” De Beer added.
