SECUNDA – Residents are angry because their electricity bills are in some cases twice as much as they had previously paid.
One resident said on social media her electricity bill for the month was R45 000, while others said they must pay interest and do not understand why.
“My account is in arrears, but I pay every month and I just do not have the time to go and get it corrected and now I have to pay interest on my apparent arrears,” said another resident.
Another resident said the municipality must employ competent people to take the meter readings and not guess the readings.
Others said they have been to Govan Mbeki Municipality to sort out their bills but to no avail.
“I already went there twice to get my account sorted out and was sent from one point to another without any success,” said a resident.
Another one has been to five different people at the municipality, but nobody could help her.
There seem to be problems with pre-paid electricity as well, as one resident claims to buy pre-paid electricity for R1 000, but only received electricity for R600.
DA councillor Ms Mariaan Chamberlain said she had an incident where a family had a problem with their electricity bill and when she enquired at the municipality, it became clear that their water and electricity readings were swopped around.
Another DA councillor, Ms Marietjie Fourie, said the municipality recently switched over to a new system and since then residents are receiving wrong accounts or no accounts at all.
She said although the municipality has had this system for two months, they still cannot provide monthly statements and the financial year-end was on 30 June.
“There was also no financial portfolio meeting held for the month,” said Ms Fourie.
The newspaper asked Mr Bheki Khubeka, acting head of marketing and communications at Govan Mbeki Municipality, for comment, but he could not comment without having all the complainants’ details and addresses.
