Pretoria - Residents in Pretoria West, under the umbrella of Lotus Gardens, Atteridgeville and Saulsville Civic Association, have asked Tshwane council speaker Mncedi Ndzwanana to convene a special council sitting with a view to have various political parties voting in favour of scrapping the estimated municipal bills.
Its chairperson, Tshepo Mahlangu, said the request was contained in a memorandum of grievance handed over to Ndzwanana during a community meeting on Sunday in Atteridgeville
The organisation has repeatedly complained about fraudulent letters of demands sent to defaulting customers by people masquerading as municipal officials wanting to extort money from residents.
Mahlangu said: “The communities of Tshwane should buy whistles and blow them to chase contractors distributing final letters of demands and disconnecting residents from power supply. We also told residents to avoid calls from the debt collectors who are tricking them to make arrangements of erroneous bills.”
He said the association was mandated by the aggrieved ratepayers affiliated with it to raise issues with Ndzwanana.
Ratepayers, he said, wanted a confrontational revenue collection campaign called #TshwaneYaTima, targeting customers whose municipal bills were in arrears to be stopped immediately in townships.
Mahlangu said: “The City of Tshwane was given 14 days to respond to the memorandum of grievances presented to the speaker. The urgent council sitting must table only items listed on the memorandum.”
Ndzwanana expressed concern about the alleged fraudulent schemes targeting ratepayers into paying for services to criminal syndicates masquerading as city officials.
He announced that the municipality would reintroduce the imbizo and ward committees.
He further warned residents about some people who approached his office pretending to represent the association, asking them to guard against such opportunistic individuals.
Finance MMC Peter Sutton, who was part of the meeting, committed to address the billing issues through partnership with the city’s Social Development Department, including backlogs and challenges in registering the indigents.
Mahlangu expressed disappointment that some senior municipal officials from finance were not part of the meeting to answer questions directly from residents.
“We cannot have officials who always undermine the will of the people and only appear when they want to enforce illegal activities on the aggrieved residents of Tshwane.”
He reiterated that residents were against being tricked into footing the wrong bills incurred through corruption and maladministration in Tshwane.
He cited the ill-fated Peu smart meter electricity prepaid contract and the Glad Africa scandal as examples of corruption.
In April, mayor Cilliers Brink announced that the municipality owed the SA Revenue Service (Sars) about R4.7 billion in outstanding VAT and penalties stemming from the Peu contract, which was irregularly awarded in 2013 and subsequently rendered invalid and set aside by the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria. The city entered into a contract with Peu Capital Partners to roll-out smart meters.
Brink said: “In the past three years or in the past year, we have learned that we owe Sars outstanding VAT payments on this unlawful contract for 2012 to 2015, and in the meantime, penalties and interest had accrued on this account. Currently, the city is paying R91 million a month on this bill, a massive squeeze on cash flow.”
Pretoria News