Durban — The IFP in eThekwini has accused the City of defrauding residents by billing them for water supplies without having done meter readings.
IFP councillor from Phoenix, north of Durban, Jonathan Annipen has filed a motion to be discussed by the City’s Executive Committee (Exco) calling for a moratorium on water disconnections until the City has done meter readings to get the correct consumption of water by each household.
Annipen said it has been over a year now since the City last did meter readings but it has billed residents on estimated consumption.
It was equivalent to fraud, he said, because some residents were sitting with hefty incorrect bills and some of them had sought financing by loan sharks to pay. In other cases, there were areas that had not had water for months, yet the City continued billing them for water they never consumed.
“Thousands of water meters have gone unread in eThekwini for more than a year and residents are being billed estimated charges for usage. This does not accurately translate to water usage versus billing and violates the council’s credit control and debt recovery policy.”
A number of residents do not have water meters because they have been stolen, vandalised or in some cases, they never had water meters, he said. He called on the Exco to resolve:
- Implementing an immediate moratorium on disconnection of water supply of all residents in eThekwini until the meter reading department has a standard operating procedure on reading of water meters.
- Conduct an audit of water meters in stock.
- Conduct an audit of properties without water meters.
- Set a timeline to close the gap between points 2 and 3.
One of the residents in Umlazi BB section, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the City had to back down and review their debt after they went to court. She said their argument was that the debt had accumulated while they never had water at all for months.
“We understand that they are estimating the consumption but why are they estimating even months you knew there was no water? Even estimation in the areas where there was water was wrong because how would the City know the families were no longer living there and only one person was left? The City must be reading meters every month,” said the resident.
eThekwini Ratepayers Association chairperson Asad Gaffar said he noted the IFP proposal, adding that his organisation has been fighting the City over the same problem for a while now. The City had already agreed to review the debt and was now correcting the inflated figures by reading meters, he said.
eThekwini Municipality spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said the City is in the process of training new meter readers, following the awarding of the new contract. “In the interim, accounts are being estimated based on previous months’ consumption. But as soon as all the meter readers have been trained, they will begin conducting actual readings. The training is estimated to take no more than two weeks. We anticipate the actual readings will begin in December.”
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