Durban pensioner Ronnie Govender, 71, fears he will one day have to fork out an exorbitant fee for electricity consumption if his meter is not replaced soon.
Govender explained that more than a year ago, his meter malfunctioned, and he claimed that the municipal contractors had bypassed it to give him what they termed a temporary power supply.
Although Govender is receiving free power, he said he has several reference numbers and also visited three to four municipal offices to lodge his complaint of a faulty meter, but was informed they could do nothing for him because there was no stock of meters.
“My wife and I are scared. While some may raise an eyebrow at our complaints, I believe it is wrong to receive something without paying for it. My biggest concern is one day waking up and realising that I must pay a huge amount of money, which we don’t have,” he said.
In December 2023, residents in eThekwini received huge bills because they had to pay for three years’ worth of extra water and sanitation, even though they had been getting six kilolitres of free water since 2020.
Sithembiso Ngema, DA eThekwini councillor, said he had written to the acting head of Electricity to prioritise the procurement of electricity prepaid meters because councillors are receiving complaints daily from residents.
“The city’s inability to maintain a stock of electricity prepaid meters leads to delays in replacing faulty meters. Some residents have been waiting for over two years, during which meters have had to be temporarily bypassed. Temporary bypasses leave residents vulnerable to potential backdated charges,” he said.
Ngema added that the department has also been led by acting heads for over two years, contributing to the mismanagement of its operation as well as the unit budget expenditure.
He believes that appointing a permanent head in the department could help improve management planning, accountability, and consequence management.
Recently, Simon Scruton, the deputy head: eThekwini Water and Sanitation, addressed the Executive Committee (Exco) on the municipality’s commitment to implement the Trading Services Reforms strategy and how they were working hard to enable the municipality to qualify for a share of the Performance-based Incentive Grant worth R54 billion from the National Treasury.
The eThekwini Water and Sanitation (EWS), the eThekwini Electricity Unit, and the Cleansing and Solid Waste (CSW) will form part of the strategy.
The municipality stated that the ultimate goal of these reforms is to establish self-contained utilities capable of delivering these basic services effectively and efficiently.
In an Exco report, the municipality stated that the finalisation of the meter maintenance is currently pending and that the delay in the repair and replacement of faulty meters was primarily due to a budget allocation deficiency.
“The technical team has been provided with a listing of the affected meters to support the resolution process. Electricity meter reading is conducted every third month, except for business meters, which are read monthly for actual and accurate billing of the consumption used,” the municipality stated in its report on meter reading.
