Durban: The Democratic Alliance (DA) took a swipe at the ANC at the IOL eThekwini mayoral debate this week, sarcastically asking why pensioners need a PhD to understand their municipal water and electricity bills. Speakers also said indigent applications are sitting for more than a year without being processed.
The debate, held in Durban, turned to the city’s billing and indigent policy, which speakers said is failing on implementation.
Alicia Kissoon, a member of the DA participating in the debate said: “Do we not have many indigent applications that are waiting per year or maybe more? Why do we have these policies if these policies don’t work? Why do you need to have a PhD to read your own water and lights account?”
“I don’t understand it myself. It’s difficult to understand. And when our pensioners get to the Sizakala centres, then someone tells them what their bill says and tells them what to do. That’s just not acceptable.”
The city’s indigent policy provides 6kl of free water per day, plus support for rates, electricity and sanitation. However, candidates pointed to a contradiction: the policy states that indigent households cannot be charged after the free allocation, yet residents are being told they can pay for top-ups.
The ANC defended the system, saying residents must present themselves for assessment.
Thabani Nyawose, of the ANC in eThekwini said: “If you come forward, present yourself, you will be assisted. It is not true that our staff don’t attend to our citizens. It might happen here and there. We employ more than 24 000 people.”
The opposition said the city has only one social worker to process indigent applications, and that thousands of water meters are failing, leading to estimates and inflated bills of up to R100 000 for RDP homes in Chatsworth, Phoenix and Verulam.
“Before we get into that, we need to examine all our meters, if they are working correctly, because that will bring the very same problem that people are having right now: wrong readings,” another speaker said.
Zwakele Mncwango, of ActionSA proposed insourcing meter readers as permanent municipal employees and introducing smart metering using radio-frequency (RF) communication to eliminate estimates.
“The solutions are twofold. One is to insource meter readers and get them permanently employed by the city, with meters being read every month with no estimates. Second, we need to look at smart metering,” he said.
The DA added that the municipality has no policy to deal with high bills, which is driving up its debtors book.