The City of Joburg is tirelessly continuing with its revenue collection, cutting off services to hundreds of properties across the city on a weekly basis.
One of the victims this week was the Place of Refuge 911 in Newlands, a shelter for the homeless which accommodates some 120 people, including children.
It also provides food for a crèche which has 80 children and which it runs from the premises.
A school for the disabled and a community dentist in the same block also had their power cut off.
Manager of the shelter, Loekie van As, admits that electricity has not been paid, but says they rely solely on donations.
After the intervention of Metrowatch, the whole block was reconnected by City Power after three days of not having electricity.
The city is, however, now demanding that the shelter comes up with R240000 by next week. The Gauteng education department and the city’s social development departments have agreed to pay their share of the bill for their own facilities in the block, but the shelter will have to come up with its portion.
“I don’t know where we are going to get the money. It has been tough without electricity. We get donations of food from Woolworths, which we rely on to feed all these people.
"We had to borrow generators to keep the freezers going or the food would have spoiled. We get no subsidies so we don’t know how we are going to raise these funds,” she said.
The city, however, insists it will continue with its revenue collection.
Mayor Herman Mashaba said his recent call to businesses which are not being billed for services, has already paid off with Absa paying R100million for one of its properties which was being under-charged.
The bank, he said, had come forward voluntarily to correct the under-billing for one of their properties.
“Upon installing the new supply and meter, the city continued to erroneously bill the bank on the previously-installed domestic meter.
“When City Power technicians investigated the supply, they realised Absa was being billed as a domestic user,” said the mayor.
Following this, the bank and the city have agreed to a settlement amount of R100 million as payment on the electricity bill. Going forward, said Mashaba, the city would ensure that the bank is correctly billed for services rendered to it.
“I would like to thank Absa Bank for voluntarily coming forward to correct the matter with the city. If we are to build a society based on the rule of law, every resident and business must do their part in upholding and following the law. In this regard, Absa Bank has set a positive example which I hope others will follow,” he added.
The city has embarked on Operation #BuyaMthetho, which aims to enforce by-laws and recover unpaid and under-paid bills.
Since the launch of the project, the city has collected a total of R341 million.
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