Sol gets hundreds of queries

ALL ACCOUNTS WHICH WERE NOT QUERIED BY RESIDENTS WILL BE CHECKED WHEN THIS MONTH’S READINGS ARE CAPTURED

THE SOL Plaatje Municipality has confirmed that it has already received 223 queries regarding high water bills as a result of air pressure in the pipes.

Municipal spokesperson Sello Matsie said yesterday that 85 of the more than 220 queries had already been completed. “Not all the queries were valid,” he said.

Matsie added that residents who were concerned about their high water accounts should send an e-mail or letter to the municipality and the query would be addressed.

“All accounts which were not queried by residents will be checked when this month’s readings are captured,” he added.

Last week the municipality admitted that it appeared that residents had been overcharged by almost R19 million for their water usage last month after shocked residents reported that their January water accounts had increased by thousands of rand.

Matsie said that according to information supplied by the acting general manager of revenue management at the municipality, Kenneth Samolapo, an analysis of the billing pattern on water revenue for January indicated that the revenue billing was more than R19 million above average for the month.

According to the municipality, when reviewing the exception report, errors were picked up on only four accounts, which accounted for around R8 million, and was put down to possible human error. The remaining amount of around R12 million (of the R19 million above average billing) could not be found.

Matsie said the relevant section of the municipality had already started revisiting all exceptions reports, in order to address the problem, while an IT analysis was also being undertaken.

He stated further that while the problem had been picked up in terms of the monetary value, further analysis still needed to be conducted to determine the total number of accounts affected.

“We will be unilaterally adjusting all affected accounts, and will not wait for the consumers to first lodge a query because of the scale of the problem,” he said at the time, adding that the interim levels affected by the spikes in billing would also be adjusted.

Complaints of high or abnormal water bills have been pouring into the municipality since October last year when the water restrictions and nightly cuts came into effect, with residents questioning whether air in their water pipes was causing their meters to run and resulting in high accounts.