Tongaat residents aghast at sky-high bills

Outraged Tongaat residents gathered at the V Moonsamy Hall in Belvedere to demand answers after having received hefty electricity bills that seemed to be getting higher every month.
About 90 residents met with staff from the eThekeweni municipality billing department last Thursday evening.

Angrily waving their bills, some showing hundreds of thousands of rands owed and one even amounting to R7 million, emotional residents accused the municipality’s expensive revenue management system (RMS) for being the cause of their ever-increasing bills.

Due to the growth of eThekweni municipality, RMS replaced the old coin system that was previously used for billing.

RMS was implemented in July 2010 and apparently introduced many errors to bills which municipal area controller Ndu Dlamini said had been sorted out.

The system cost the municipality about R620 million and took more than 10 years to become fully operational. At the meeting, residents said their bills had been slowly increasing through the years, with last year’s bills having been the worst. The municipality has also taken to doing meter readings once every four months which is thought by residents to also be a contributing factor to the high amounts.

Resident Chad Moonsamy said his bill last month went up from R900 (from previous months) to R87 397.

“I was not at home for the entire December period. I still do not know how this happened.”

A group of residents complained that an elderly pensioner was faced with a R5 000 bill that had to be paid before her electricity was cut off. They said the pensioner had been unable to buy food for two months as a result. Others complained of having to take loans from the bank to foot their electricity bills.

Another resident, Andrew Pillay, raised the question of municipal staffing.

“I have to question if we are really paying for electricity bills or if we are footing the cost for the municipality outsourcing workers. I have heard from a trusted source within the municipality that they have been outsourcing workers. I have also heard that municipal staff do not yet know how RMS works. If the municipality is outsourcing staff, I would like to know how competent they are at doing the meter readings.”

eThekweni municipality’s Dlamini admitted that the municipality was outsourcing workers but could not answer on their competency or on what the eThekweni workers who would normally do the meter readings were doing.

“Every query varies and every bill is different. We cannot give each one of you answers without looking specifically at your accounts,” said Dlamini.

Chaos ensued in the hall and the people threatened to protest if their problems were not addressed soon. The meeting was postponed to next week where the municipality are to prepare a presentation explaining the RMS billing system.

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