Municipal incompetence will cost me money

THE increase in water tariffs is necessary.

But an unintended consequence is that the metro is going to end up with a lot of account queries and billing issues, leading to lots of unhappy residents, lots of additional admin costs and even more backlogs for Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. Here is why: On meter reading day in May, I diligently checked my water meter and calculated the monthly usage at 18 megalitres.

The invoice arrived last week for 10 megalitres.

The meter reader seemingly did not know (despite being told every month for the last seven years) that the meter is outside our boundary wall on the public verge.

Instead the meter reader said that nobody was home, so an estimate was made.

I have e-mailed the NMBM and asked officials to re-invoice me correctly for 18 megalitres rather than 10 – yes, I want to pay more money to the NMBM!

But from experience I know that the NMBM will not respond to my e-mail promptly, in fact I will be lucky to get any sort of “human” reply.

My issue then is that the next time the meter is read, the usage will be inflated the extra eight megalitres from the previous month.

Because of the stepped tariffs, this will mean that I will be invoiced incorrectly for an extra R74.48.

Five of the eight megalitres will be invoiced at R29.46 per megalitre rather that at the correct rate of R14.57 per megalitre which should have been applied to the original invoice.

Needless to say, I will not be paying the NMBM for its own mistakes and inability to read its own meters. The upshot is that anybody who receives a bill based on an estimate would be advised to check the actual meter reading as he or she too could end up being over-billed.

To make matters worse, the NMBM has sent out an account insert with this month’s water bill to explain the new part C tariff and its calculations for 18 megalitres usage are wrong.

It hardly inspires you with confidence!

David Hamer, Kragga Kamma Park, Port Elizabeth