Colossal utility bill shock
Hundreds of residents in the east have received inflated services accounts from the council last month.
With electricity being disconnected without any pre-warning and inflated utility bills amounting to thousands of rands, it is claimed the financial status of the Tshwane metro is in a worse position than generally believed.
Some accounts received by residents in the east were as much as R20 000 more than the average monthly payment.
In a period of less than three days, Democratic Alliance (DA) ward councillors had been inundated with complaints by residents about their services accounts.
“I have had more than 20 emails in three hours from residents in the east who had received excessive accounts,” said Councillor Siobhan Muller.
Muller said the bulk of complaints received from residents in her ward, which included Menlo Park, Lynnwood and Brooklyn, involved residents who regularly phoned in their readings to the council.
“Currently, residents who send in monthly meter readings are receiving utility bills for more than the submitted bills.”
“Despite taking the time to take their own meter readings and sending them in to the correct email address, the system is billing them for thousands of rands more than the actual reading,” said Muller.
In other cases, some residents had not received any utility bills for months.
“They (residents) are now getting threatening SMSes demanding tens of thousands of rands or face having their services disconnected.”
Readers who contacted Rekord to complain, said their electricity supply had been cut off without any prior warning.
Muller herself had received an inflated account,” she said.
“Today I received a bill for more than a thousand rands more than the actual readings . For years I have sent in my readings within the stipulated time, as I do not trust the city to produce an accurate bill,” said Muller.
“Despite residents taking the time to do the work of the municipality, we are still getting bills with estimates and the estimates are very clearly incorrect. That is if bills are in fact issued at all.”
She said that if 100 000 residents all received a bill for R1 000 more than the actual amount, the city would be incorrectly collecting R10 million.
“And the consumer would receive a cut off threat if they did not pay the amount on time.”
“In addition, if they were cut off, they would be charged a few hundred rand each to be reconnected when they had in fact done everything to ensure accurate readings and billing,” she said.
Muller has asked residents to contact her if they found themselves in a similar situation.
“Some bills are up to R 20 000 over the normal account.”
The actions by the council, she added, would lead residents to believe the city is in a serious financial crisis and desperate to collect money not owed to it to cover its debt.
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