Westville Ratepayers Association chairperson Asad Gafar, second from left, with protesters fed up with the city about services, including water billing and supply, outside the Durban High Court on Thursday. Picture: Duncan Guy
Durban - Water worries have driven eThekwini residents to court, to queues at municipal offices, to money lenders and into fear and silence.
Amid the outrage over bills suddenly being exponentially increased, cut-offs and rude indifference on the part of officials, it has also emerged that eThekwini Municipality has run out of water meters, leaving many residents across the city with dry taps and no access to water.
Others have received exorbitant bills of tens of thousands of rand, without any plausible reason. This has led to blacklisting and money borrowing.
Some spoke to the Independent on Saturday on condition of anonymity, saying they would be targeted if the council found out about their complaints.
An Essenwood resident said he moved into his new house two months ago only to discover that there wasn’t a water meter. Despite several trips to the municipality he was told they were out of water meters and he would have to wait for stock to arrive.
He has turned to his neighbour, who runs a hosepipe over the wall, so he can fill buckets.
“I could tap into the water pipes but that means the municipality won’t know how much I’m using and that would be stealing,” he said.
He said construction work was in progress on his property and his neighbour also supplied him with water for that.
“He said he won’t charge me but soon it will come to that because we need water every day,” he said.
Consumers who have faulty meters, and some who say they don’t, have been billed so much that they face financial ruin.
Several told the IOS that they applied for the 80/20 system which meant they could make payment arrangements, but every week the municipality changed the terms, depending on who was on duty at the time.
Councillors said they had no idea why the tender for the water meters had not been finalised.
“It’s daylight robbery,” said IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi. “The outcry from the community is that the municipality is thumbsucking when it’s charging them. There’s no accuracy when it comes to meter reading or installation of new meters. Some have new meters, some have the old system. There are so many tenders that still need to go out under water and sanitation.”
He said he had urged Exco to set aside more money for water and sanitation.
The main challenge, he said, was people having to wait “a long time for meters to be installed. At the same time they are being charged for running water but some don’t even get water to their households. I don’t know what the delay is when it comes to this water meter project. It means it has been robbing people because you can’t charge people (based) on meters that are not there.
“It’s not acceptable that you are paying for something that’s not measured.”
Nkosi said the municipality was losing a lot of revenue because of illegal connections.
“Those who are still waiting for meters, they won’t just wait for some years to get water meters, what they will do is connect it themselves illegally.”
He said it was “quite embarrassing” that a huge metro like eThekwini, which controlled billions, was failing the people.
DA Exco councillor Thabani Mthethwa said it was worrying that the municipality waited until they ran out of stock before starting the tender process for water meters.
“It is unfair on consumers to be charged estimated amounts because sometimes they get overcharged. If they are undercharged for months, they end up with a huge amount to pay when the municipality finally reads the meter. This compromises consumers for things which are not their fault.”
Mthethwa said the city manager was responsible for investigating who dropped the ball.
Councillor Alicia Kissoon, who sits on the Municipal Public Accounts Committee and is responsible for Ward 23, which includes Reservoir Hills and Palmiet in Clare Estate, said according to the department there were water meters in stock. However, there was a delay in getting to sites timeously with numerous bursts across the city causing water to run in the streets unabated for days.
“There are countless residents who contact me almost daily in regard to over-billing. They are often pushed from pillar to post, have no relief and have to make payment arrangements. Many complain of unhelpful staff, incorrect information and numerous visits to the department. This cannot be accepted as the department has to make provision for the fact that its billing system is simply inaccurate. On the flip side, we have more than 56% water loss, equating to billions of rands spent to buy water from Umgeni. Residents should not have to foot the bill for any inaccuracies,” said Kissoon.
Treasure Beach pensioner Rabi Sunker Bhagwandin said his combined water and electricity bill used come to R6 000 at the most. Then it spiked to R8 000 and was now sometimes R20 000. Bhagwandin said three people lived in the home.
“We turn off the geyser after a bath. We cook on a two-plate gas stove, the lights are off and we switch off unused appliances.”
He said the municipality was adamant he was not being overcharged.
He applied for a prepaid electricity meter to be installed in his house but the municipality has been out of stock.
A Bluff pensioner who lives alone told Independent on Saturday that his water bill came to R21 000. He receives only a Sassa pension and he also applied for the 80/20 debt relief. In August last year, he applied for a prepaid water meter but was regularly told it was still out of stock.
The pensioner said despite making arrangements to pay off his bill he was frequently threatened with disconnection and said once the water was cut he would need thousands to have it reconnected.
Also on the Bluff, municipal employee Luthando Ngcobo was not afraid to speak out because he was doing nothing wrong by trying to resolve his water bill for a house in which he had lived for several years.
At first his water bill averaged R3 000 a month. Then bills of R10 000 and more became the norm.
“I was asking myself why is this bill going up, up, up all the time? What has changed, there’s still the same number of people living there since 2010.”
Ngcobo said municipal employees who were in arrears automatically had money deducted from their wages and so every month the municipality took money from his pay and he had no control over it.
Despite querying the huge bills he was told to just pay up.
He said he had called a plumber to check his meter and was told it was leaking and had done so “for a very long time”. The plumber said because the meter belonged to the municipality he was not allowed to fix it and advised Ngcobo to report it to the municipality because they had to fix it.
“Even when I closed the valve outside, the meter was still counting. I took a video of it and I told them about the issue.”
The municipality sent out a plumber at least three times but the bills kept on coming.
“I went back again to say ‘haibo, I reported the matter. What’s happening now?’
“They said they were going to sort it out and reverse it, they’ve got insurance. They repair it and after a while it leaks again and they repair it and so the stream continues,” he said. “But every time they fixed the meter it would leak again and the bills are still piling up.”
Ngcobo said currently the bill was the “right amount” but the outstanding R150 000 plus interest must still be paid off, even if it was not his fault.
“They told me nothing can be done on the matter and they couldn’t help me. They said they can’t fix it and they won’t write off the debt,” said Ngcobo.
The Independent on Saturday sent repeated requests for information to the municipality, which at one point responded: “We have referred the service delivery matter to the relevant municipal department to investigate the validity of the issues and claims being raised.”
Meanwhile, members of the Westville Ratepayers Association (WRA) and their umbrella organisation, the eThekwini Rate Protest Movement, are awaiting judgment in an urgent application to have the city restore services to Westville residents who deferred their payments to an alternative account rather than pay the city while the WRA was in dispute with the municipality.
The Independent on Saturday