Joburg ratepayer gets bill for R603 000

Jenny Gladwin received the shock of her life when she opened her City of Johannesburg municipal accounts bill and saw it was for R603 000.

Gladwin lives in a three-bedroom house in Roodepoort North.

Her average bill is between R800 and R1 000 a month.

"It all started in March, and by May the bill has increased to R609 000 with the interest," she said.

Gladwin has been trying to have the bill rectified, but to no avail.

She is now afraid the council will disconnect her services.

Kgamanyane Maphologela, head of customer communications in the council's revenue department, said that after investigating the account, his department acknowledged that the exorbitant charge was a billing error.

"Service tickets have been logged, and reversals will be done on all charges, including interest, and the account will be adjusted accordingly.

"The customer, Ms Gladwin, has been contacted and was informed that the query is escalated to our back office for an adjustment to be done and the reversal of interest. We apologise to the customer for any inconvenience caused," he said.

Meanwhile, a shock report released by the Water Research Commission has found that "a university degree is not enough to make sense of your municipal account".

It found in a study that only 7.4 percent of respondents could find the monthly water use on the municipal account.

Project leader Sarah Slabbert said: "The municipality serves 150 000 households. One can ask the question: how do municipalities or the government expect consumers to save water and electricity if their monthly water and electricity use is presented in such an incomprehensible manner that not even the highest living standards measure (LSM groups) can understand it?"

Only 14 percent of respondents in the highest LSM groups understood it, she said.

Consumers are having to sift through incomprehensible codes, numbers and abbreviations to find the single amount that they must pay to avoid disconnection or restriction. "This state of affairs contributes nothing to saving resources and wastes taxpayers' money," Slabbert said.

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