Think again before squeezing ratepayers

Buckle up ratepayers — the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality is looking to charge you more to insource artisans to repair water leaks in indigent households. The city’s water bosses have recommended that account holders pay an extra 3.35% — on top of the planned water tariff hike for the 2020/2021 financial year (estimated at 9.5%) — to take on about 100 learner ward plumbers permanently.

Any planned hikes will, however, need the backing of the council before they can be implemented.

These “foot plumbers”, as the municipality refers to them as, are unqualified and semi-skilled workers who for the past 10 years have been repairing water leaks in poor households and in the homes of those who are beneficiaries of the municipality’s indigent programme — Assistance To The Poor.

Up to now, they been paid from the annual equitable share grant that the metro receives from the National Treasury, which is meant to subsidise the poor.

Insourcing the artisans means they would become employees of the city and it would have to find money elsewhere in its budget to pay them.

In the absence of any revenue streams to fund the initiative, the metro’s executive director of infrastructure and engineering, Walter Shaidi, recommends that the costs be added to consumers’ water bills.

To be clear, we support efforts to save water, particularly because the city’s dam levels continue to drop every week.

But, the metro’s proposal does not demonstrate that it will make any extra effort to curb water leaks — it is merely a bureaucratic process that seeks to move the cost burden from one budget to another.

Only this time, it seeks to put the squeeze on already pressured consumers.

Just how effective the 100 foot plumbers have been is open to question. The city continues to lose about 43% of its water to leaks, technical losses and unmetered homes and businesses. The council would do well to consider the advice of its budget and treasury department before taking a lasting decision that could result in the erosion of its rates base and an increase in overdue debt.

The department commented: “The council must also bear in mind that recommending double digit increases for tariffs during the current economic climate is not something that will be easily accepted by our communities/ratepayers and also by the guidelines that National Treasury issues ...”

It also makes the telling point that the local government elections are due to take place in 2021.