Pretoria - The Democratic Alliance on Tuesday met the National Consumer Commission (NCC) to discuss the long-running billing crisis in Johannesburg.
National spokesman Mmusi Maimane said the City of Johannesburg was peddling lies about the resolution of the problem of incorrect bills.
“There are still numerous Johannesburg residents that are receiving incorrect bills. The City's claims of resolving the billing crisis are therefore false,” he said.
“We have submitted more than 2700 unresolved billing queries to the NCC, all collected from members of the public who attended our 'billing assistance day' on September 9,” said Maimane.
He said the DA believed the city had breached several sections of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA).
“By claiming that the billing crisis had been resolved, and that the backlog in unresolved billing queries had been resolved by the end of June the city has breached section 41(1)(a) of the CPA.
“The 2700 unresolved billing queries we recovered in September indicate that the City has blatantly misled its ratepayers.
“It has misrepresented its ability to deliver services, bill those services correctly, and resolve billing problems effectively,” said Maimane.
He said the City was also in breach of several other sections of the CPA.
“In light of these violations, we believe the NCC should serve a series of compliance notices with the City of Johannesburg in accordance with Section 100 of the CPA,” he said.
“These compliance notices will compel the city to either deliver on its part of the deal and attend to the billing problems of its residents, or face significant financial penalties; and even criminal prosecution by the National Prosecuting Authority,” said Maimane.
In the past, the DA said the city had been the worst performing of South Africa's nine metros in terms of the accuracy and reliability of its financial data.
In September, the party tried to hand over thousands of unresolved billing queries to the Gauteng finance mayoral committee, but member Geoffrey Makhubo refused to accept the documents.
His spokeswoman Zoleka Zide said that the city had a contract agreement with its customers, and as such the DA could not resolve queries on its behalf. The city was not going to give preferential treatment to any person or political organisation.
Maimane said numerous “constructive avenues” had been tried in a bid to resolve the problem.
“The ANC continues to pretend as if this problem does not exist. So we will now take this process (with the NCC) to its logical conclusion and compel them to take it seriously through the rule of law,” he said.
“The city's administration has breached the CPA at several levels, and will now have to own up to that,” said Maimane. - Sapa