Water tariff drop approved to improve city’s finances

Nelson Mandela Bay’s council has approved a proposal to drop water tariffs down a notch to ease the financial burden on residents in the hope this will encourage them to pay their municipal bills.

The municipality has made a U-turn on its decision last year to impose punitive tariffs on water users whose consumption was high.

At present, Part D of the water tariff charges are being implemented on households and businesses who use more than 9kl a month.

But the move has backfired, leading to the municipality’s debtors book increasing to R15.2bn.

The tariffs will now revert to Part C.

Mayor Retief Odendaal said resorting to the punitive Part D tariff had failed in its intended purpose of easing water usage and had instead led to an increase in residents not paying their bills.

This, he said, had resulted in a revenue collection rate of 60.7% — far below the targeted 79%.

The national department of water and sanitation had proposed the tariff reduction last month as a measure to improve the metro’s revenue collection rate.

The National Treasury supported this view.

The city moved from Part C to D in June as a drought-mitigation strategy, a decision supported at the time by both the ANC and DA in council.

Several smaller parties were against the hike.

ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom shouted out “I told you so” when Odendaal presented his report this week.

“The DA and other parties did not listen to me and the CFO [Selwyn Thys] when we said going to tariff D was a bad decision.”

Grootboom said when he rejected the implementation of the punitive tariff he was ridiculed.

DA councillor Dries van der Westhuizen was quick to remind Grootboom that the council made the final decision on matters affecting the metro.

“You must remember that even though the National Treasury has advised us, the council still has the final decision on the matter.”