Massive service delivery march planned to Tshwane House

Thousands of residents from Mamelodi and other regions in Tshwane have planned a massive service delivery march to Tshwane House on March 19.

The march is about addressing high municipal bills, scrapping bills, water shortages and other burning service delivery issues.

This after Mamelodi residents held a service delivery meeting on Saturday at Ouane Primary School in Mamelodi East.

Organiser and president of the Mamelodi Concerned Residents’ Association, Oupa Mtshweni, said the march aims to invite the Tshwane mayor, Cilliers Brink, and his office to the township “since we don’t know him and he has never visited us”.

He said Tshwane metro officials cannot serve the public from their offices. He urged them to attend public meetings as they are public servants.

“The issue of an inaccurate billing system and scrapping [of] the bills had been going on for far too long,” said Mtshweni.

He said in 2018, the high court ordered Tshwane metro to scrap all abnormal bills and attend to other service delivery issues that they had raised.

Mtshweni said the issue of poor service delivery does not affect only Mamelodi residents, but those in areas like Atteridgeville, Soshanguve, Mabopane and Hammanskraal.

Residents from these areas have also held their own service delivery meetings and will form part of the massive service delivery march.

He added that he had stopped paying for services 26 years ago, and he was not planning to pay anytime soon until all inaccurate bills were scrapped.

Mtshweni advised residents to do the same because the bills are abnormal and incorrect.

Other issues raised at the meeting included electricity bills not being delivered to residents’ doorsteps.

Mtshweni said since the delivery of electricity bills was stopped, a lot of residents started complaining about the inaccurate billing system, from water to electricity.

“Today, Mamelodi residents – especially senior citizens depending on social grants to survive – are issued a final letter of demand and are forced to make payment arrangements with Tshwane metro,” Mtshweni said.

“As the organisation representing residents mostly with service delivery, we have been fighting with the metro to cancel all abnormal municipal service fees for years now,” he said.

“Sassa announced that the social grant money is for food and transport, not municipal bills.”

He said it was unfair to issue a final letter of demand to pensioners and expect them to pay an abnormal municipal service fee of more than R100 000 within a period of seven to 10 days.

If people fail to pay, legal action will be instated against clients for recovery of the full amount, including all costs of an inaccurate bill without any further notice, said Mtshweni.

The problem of abnormal fees has been there for a long time, and community members have tried to have meetings with the metro to resolve the matter, but none of these meetings materialised.

Some of the residents have resorted to paying R40 a month because they could not afford the thousands of rands due to the Tshwane metro, which has issued its customers with an estimated municipal service fee.

“Tshwane is robbing us. Tshwane metro is failing the public with water shortages in Mamelodi, including the illegal connection at the reservoir, streetlights, and graveyards, to name a few,” said Mtshweni.

The next service delivery meeting in Mamelodi will be held at Ouane Primary School on Saturday.

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