Are our electricity meter readings correct?

AN OPEN letter S’bu Sithole:

Are we being overcharged for electricity? I’m no expert in the electrical or instrumentation fields, but I do believe my assumption to be feasible and therefore I ask: Are the residents of our city being overcharged for electricity?

Having heard from a number of people who have had prepaid electricity meters installed, that their electricity usage has decreased, I started questioning the reason for this. Can it really be a decrease in usage or is it a case of more accurate metering?

It is a commonly known fact that all metering devices require periodic calibration. It can therefore only be assumed that an electricity meter would require the same. After discussing this with a number of acquaintances in the electrical field, my assumption was confirmed when I was informed that all mechanical electricity meters have a calibration adjustment.

This makes me question when and how often the city conducts calibration on its meters. So many of the meters have been in place for many years and yet I have never heard of them being checked.

It is logical to assume that any measuring device that works continuously year after year will wear and therefore become inaccurate.

This inaccuracy would more than likely show a higher reading on a mechanical device such as an electricity meter.

Can you advise on the measures the city takes to ensure that electricity consumption is correctly metered and that consumers are not being overcharged?

In conclusion I must mention that I believe this problem would also apply to our water meters. GAVIN HEGTER

Chairman Yellowwood Park Ratepayers

to city manager

By-laws there for a reason – let’s obey

IN EVERYwell-run city in the world there are by-laws in place for a good reason, and citizens who flout these are prosecuted and fined.

This raises the question about the effective running and management our city, where the existing bylaws are, on a daily basis, totally ignored without consequences.

From building rules and regulations, to the disgusting trashing of the beachfront every weekend, residential areas being invaded by unwanted businesses and now the fireworks season, when the banning of percussive “big bang” crackers is totally ignored, our laws are flouted by so many. The last applies, whether one celebrates Guy Fawkes (absurd colonial practice) or Diwali, or the New Year’s Eve bangfest, where idiots run wild.

Surely people who ignore the city’s by-laws must realise they are flouting accepted decent behaviour, which surely is required from all of us who desire a well-run and managed city. Thumbing our noses at the rules puts us in the same category as the petty criminals who roam the streets without a care, hoping they will not be caught.

If we can’t obey the laws, how dare we complain ad nauseam about these criminals and illegal businesses, who are systematically destroying Durban and indeed the whole country with their nefarious actions.

Let’s not be part of the problem, let’s all do the right thing and make our city a place to be proud of. The city’s by-laws are there for all of us to obey every day, not just when it suits some of us. M MITCHELL

Westville

Zuma laughs his head off in our crisis

LAUGHING President Jacob Zuma, I want the same pills you and Blade Nzimande are taking.

The roads are crumbling, crime is rife, government officials are corrupt, the students are rising and the police don’t know how to handle them. Anyone who seems to do a good job for the country is deemed to be not doing a good job for the ANC, on top of which we are in the grip of a drought.

The day our president laughed his head off in Parliament was the same day a Free State farmer cried because he found a calf next to its dead mother. He had run out of feed.

Blade laughs about students’ #Fees-must-fall campaign, and the president laughs because the people of South Africa challenge him to put the country first, and to possibly even take the drought seriously. I figure he must be taking happy pills. Please share them, Mr President. God knows, we all need a good laugh.

And he who laughs last laughs longest. That day will come when you, Mr Prez, no longer hold office. We won’t need happy pills then. HEATHER BUTLER

Pennington

Has the blindfold now lifted slightly?

I HAVE a feeling that the man in the blindfold, Brian Keenan, conveyed far more to Robert Fisk than the latter has revealed.

The article, “Thought developed from four years in a blindfold,” (The Mercury, November 18) does not reflect Fisk's usual vituperation and bias against Israel, even if he is unable to omit it entirely.

I have long believed that Fisk also cannot see clearly and perhaps now his blindfold has been lifted a little.

Fisk states that “all those lost innocents, Lebanese, Russians and French, are equal as our brothers and sisters”. Very true, but note that Israelis are not mentioned and they are being butchered daily in the streets of the Holy Land.

Does that not reveal today’s problem, dehumanisation of people, as Elie Wiesel has designated as the cause of the Holocaust of the Jews and a great many others?

Fisk refers to Wiesel but in a different context, but then again I believe that Fisk also wears a blindfold. It is significant that Keenan refers to walls.

Walls are barriers and can symbolise resistance to feelings and concepts, to prevent the “other” from coming too close.

Keenan sees them as “damaging our ability to think, to being creative”. But to do all this we have to be alive.

In the Middle East a wall can prevent suicide bombers from wreaking the havoc of Paris and, in the case of Israel, saving a thousand civilian lives. DON KRAUSZ Johannesburg

Vivian Reddy should explain

VIVIAN Reddy’s generalisation on the issues of race relations, specifically between Indians and Africans, needs a response.

Providing no specifics and treading on such dangerous ground at the expense of further polarising relationships between the two races, so that he becomes popular among the majority, is indeed questionable.

His view is but a desperate attempt to popularise and be accepted by the majority. He should stick to what he does best.

This has enriched him financially, although in my humble opinion as a politician he does fit snugly with the majority of the current government leaders. J NAIDU Merebank

Shut off money flow to shut off the terror

THE Islamic State has claimed responsibility for this atrocity (Paris). The question that many now ask is: How do we stop this terrorism?

A greater military response from the West is expected and will happen because there cannot be a diplomatic response. I believe that the best way of stopping this is financial.

The terrorists must have funding. Follow the money and there you will find the truth. Money doesn’t lie. Stop the flow of money and starve them out. A commitment from our financial institutions is needed to stop the global terrorism. JOHN DRAKE

Winklespruit SPATIAL planning, town planning, city planning, urban and regional planning ensure the selection of the appropriate use of land for orderly, progressive and sustainable development for the benefit of present and future generations. The current drought – the worst since the early 1990s – is a sign of things to come and is bound to determine how our municipalities plan for the future.

Spatial plans are in many ways the physical expression of other policies – that is policies for redistribution and poverty alleviation, economic growth, job creation, innovation and urbanisation.

All of these have a spatial element. The principles in these policies are often expressed through physical changes to the towns and cities themselves, such as development nodes, new transport systems, or fibre-optic cabling.

These in their turn can radically alter how we live and work in the future. For example, young people now socialise through technology unlike their parents who relied on cars for their social lives. All of these things matter immensely.

Another element that enters this equation is the impact of climate change on the availability and quality of present and future water supplies. Water is and will continue to be one of the most critical resources impacting on the development of societies and the development approval processes.

Water scarcity has come to haunt us as KZN has been experiencing the worst drought in two decades and our prospects for relief at this point in time remain bleak.

Focus

The increasing frequency of periods of drought has impacted significantly on the sustainability of communities, the economy of this province, as well as on the livelihoods and lives of our residents.

It is clear that the events and changes that have been experienced here in KZN in respect of this important natural resource and the factors that have impacted on the availability of water, as well as its quality and location, require the attention and focus of all citizens and stakeholders, including town planners.

We must not forget that economic, environmental and social issues are inextricably linked so that an impact in one area will affect the others.

Agriculture, urban settlements, the transportation sector, mining, and tourism developments, among other economic activities, have all created a demand for water while at the same time producing pollutants which impact on the ambient water quality. It is widely recognised that rainwater harvesting by individual property owners is one of the ways of reducing the demand on the public system.

Without a doubt this is the path we need to pursue to address some of the issues we have with water, not only at a community level but at the level of the individual households.

We need to strive towards a situation where every rural household has a backyard water tank where water could be stored for domestic and agricultural use.

As government, we are taking proactive steps to mitigate against the effects of drought, particularly on our agriculture sector and on small rural communities, through a multi-pronged approach which includes aggressive water conservation campaigns and emergency drought relief in the affected communities through the drilling of boreholes and water tankering.

In both of these initiatives, we have been helped by our partners in local and national government, but we obviously need to do more.

It is against such a bleak background that we reflect on the role town planners ought to play in our society today.

It is a difficult undertaking, but good planning can improve the overall health and well-being of the community, the economy and the environment.

Dube-Ncube is the KwaZuluNatal MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.