PEARL RANTSEKENG|
THE City of Johannesburg has intensified its campaign to clamp down on illegal water and electricity connections, projected to be costing the metro over R5 billion per year.
City of Joburg MMC for Finance Jolidee Matongo recently led a high-powered team of senior city officials who visited four business sites around Johannesburg in an operation aimed at stopping revenue leakages and improve revenue collection to enhance service delivery.
The first stop for the team was at a site in Randburg, north of Johannesburg, which houses a petrol station and a fast-food outlet.
According to the technician on site, the meter readings of the business site did not reflect the true nature of the business activities.
“It seems as if the meter is not registering consumption. What we now need to do is to establish where the fault lies and check whether the meter has also not been tempered with,” explained the technician who did not want to be named.
Speaking to Inside Metros during the recent operation, Matongo said the surprise visits by top city officials formed part of City of Joburg’s efforts to get consumers, big and small, to pay for their services.
He said one of the biggest challenges faced by the city was the culture of non-payment by both businesses and private users.
“What we want to do now is to make sure that the meter is replaced and that the consumer is billed correctly. We will check both the water and electricity meters and check where the fault lies. If we find that the meter has been tempered with, we will have no option but to disconnect the meter until a fine has been paid,” said Matongo.
In a similar operation last September, the city cut electricity supply to several posh estates in Dainfern due to residents owing over R13 million.
Already, there has been some notable positive results coming out of the city’s efforts to tackle the leakages after it recently collected R8.2 million from various developers at the Waterfall Estate in Midrand after they illegally connected water meters and stole water from the city.
An investigation led by the City’s Group Forensic and Investigation Service (GFIS) and Operation Buya Mthetho team had established that a number of water meters installed at the Waterfall Estate in Midrand, were not procured through normal process and were therefore not on the city’s billing system.
To date, Operation Buya Mthetho has collected over R408 million in revenue previously not billed by the city.
Matongo said part of the problem was that some of the contractors the City uses for the connections and disconnections were not honest.
“The city will send them to go disconnect a certain meter and then the same officials will go back and take money from the customer and reconnect them. Hence these surprise visits to the sites. We must go to the big ones as well as the small ones,” said the finance MMC.
The next stop for the team in an operation led by Matongo was downtown Johannesburg to a building block that houses just over 200 living units which are used as student accommodation.
The property also houses shops on the ground floor.
During the city’s previous visit, it was found that the property had two electricity meters with one supplying the business and the other supplying the residential component of the building. However, it appears that the residential meter had been replaced but was never updated on the account.
The visit was to ensure that the correct meter was installed at the premises and the correct readings backdated to the last reading.
The same was also done by the Johannesburg Water team who found that the dials on the water meter were removed hence the consumption is currently not been measured and thus the residential component was never charged.
A new water meter was also installed.
The building is said to also have only been charged for two bins, twice a week, for all the over 200 units.
The day ended at a business site in Kliptown, Soweto, where the team was also set to conduct similar investigations and installations.
- Inside Metros