eThekwini Municipality mayoral candidates gathered at the IOL premises on Wednesday for a Town Hall Debate on their plans to improve the city.
In the heated discussion, IOL's KwaZulu-Natal provincial editor Yogas Nair asked the mayoral hopefuls and representatives about the water crisis, persistent sewage problems, electricity disruptions and excessive billing.
She also asked what the parties plan to do within the first 100 days in office.
"We are not going to act after 100 days. When it comes to billing, we encourage all our residents to use the eThekwini mobile app so that when you take a picture of your meter reading, you send the picture with you," said the ANC's Thabani Nyawose.
He claimed that by doing this, residents will be correctly billed.
"We have also invited our senior citizens, because most of them, they are indigent. They must come forward to our offices. So before, they will be assisted. Because some of them deserve free litres of water because they are indigents."
The EFF's Hlwngiwe Mkhaliphi said the party has been raising this issue to no avail.
"Most of the time, officials don't go and check each house, but they are estimating. So, as EFF, there is a solution. We are going to employ unemployed youth from the wards to go and check each and every house in order to get the correct billing," she said.
Mkhaliphi claimed that residents are allegedly being robbed through estimation.
"The simple thing to do is to hire people to go house to house and check the materialities of the houses."
The Minority Front's (MF) Shameen Thakur Rajbans accused officials of not being transparent with the billing.
"There are many limitations in the system. So, those can be manipulated...It is our basic services that people need."
IOL