City finances healthy but residents to cough up
Residents are going to cough up more.
Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Finance, Geoffrey Makhubo yesterday announced a record budget of R52.6 billion.
Although this shows that the City of Johannesburg is financially healthy, massive tariff hikes have been included in the 2015 budget. This includes a 12.19 per cent electricity, six per cent property rates, 14 per cent water, sewerage and sanitation increase and eight percent waste removal increase. Makhubo said the electricity and water hike is in line with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) and Rand Water’s hike.
He used as an example a household of which the house costs R700 000, to explain how this will affect residents. If the household uses 500kWh electricity and 25kl water their municipal bill will go from R1645 t0 R1835.
Makhubo also announced pensioners who has an income of less that R7850 per month will receive a 100 per cent rebate on the municipal bill.
The budget has been allocated as follows:
• R864 million for housing
• R7.2 billion for water
• R2 billion for waste removal
• R743 for health
• R182 million for social development in 2015/16
• R1.2 billion for group corporate and shared services.
In the light of e-tolls staying and an expected rise in the fuel price, the hike in tariffs has been met with widespread criticism.
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