I read the Cape Argus front page article with disbelief. De Lille is going after ratepayers for more money YET AGAIN.
As Grant Haskin from the ACDP said, we have been experiencing double-digit % increases in water tariffs for years, and per the City’s own forecast we will continue to experience double- digit increases.
More importantly, why does the City write off R1billion of revenue this year from unpaid water bills - see P142 of the City’s own budget. Last year it was R894million. Next year it is forecasted at R1.1bn. So just in these three years, it has written off 3bn of its own revenue.
RELATED: #WaterCrisis: Get ready to pay extra 'drought charge'
Who owes this money? How can the City simply write off 15% of its revenue from water collection.
Over the last 10 years that they have been warned of this crisis, they have written off, in today’s money, R9.5bn in terms of debt impairment. To put that in perspective, it would have paid for four large-scale desalination plants producing 600million litres of water per day and also four large-scale dams to store the water.
Instead, what do we have? The City running to the hand that feeds it and demanding yet more money. All questions posed to Eddie Andrews our “mini mayor” for Area South, Councillor Penny East (chairperson of the so-called "Oversight Committee”) have simply been ignored.
Why has nothing been done to make this evidence of debt impairment mismanagement public, to hold those responsible for not paying for their water, and to hold those people in the City accountable for not disclosing this information. How much does this City intend raising for the drought charge as a per annum figure?
Ratepayers are sick and tired of having to pay for everything, receiving very little in return, and on top of this we are not allowed to have a say in how neighbourhoods are managed - the public participation process is just an absolute joke.
Time to start fighting back and voting DA ward councillors out and independent ones in.
* Peter Stenslunde is from Milnerton
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.