Councillor Siseko Mbandezi, Mayco member for finance, in his response to my letter, “City appears to be merciless towards its ratepayers” (October 13), seems to be missing my point by a mile.
First, he maintains that “the Home User Service Charge is not fully cost-reflective as it is only approximately half of what it should be”.
What hogwash. The key argument in my letter is based on budgets – the City’s published budget and the budget of the ratepayer. And although ratepayers must tighten their belts in order to balance their budgets, instead of tightening its belt, the City mercilessly continues to charge an additional fee, even when it failed to provide a single unit of electricity for a period of almost 3 months.
Second, Cllr Mbandezi states: “No matter how much or how little electricity is used, it still costs the same to provide the services.”
If not a single unit of electricity was provided to a ratepayer for a period of 3 months, then why still charge the ratepayer the Home User Service Charge? So, Cllr Mbandezi argues that even in this case a ratepayer will be charged the additional charge for 3 months.
Third, Cllr Mbandezi states: “Without this charge, the usage component of the tariff would be much higher.”
Herein lies the crux of the matter. Picture the following and, for simpli ity, say electricity is charged R2.48 per kWh, increased from R2 the previous year. This implies that electricity increased by 24% for the past year. Also assume that 1 000 kWh of electricity was consumed with a Home User Service Charge of R185 per month. The latter amount translates to an additional 0.19c (0.185c) per kWh of electricity.
Now, Cllr Mbandezi states: “Without this charge, the usage component of the tariff would be much higher.”
The true usage tariff is therefore R2.67 (=R2.48 plus 0.19c). This implies that the true increase in electricity was not 24%, but 33.5%.
Hence, upon introducing the additional charge for electricity, the City cunningly introduced a mammoth increase in electricity tariff, with a part of the tariff hidden in the Home User Service Charge. After its introduction, the Home User Charge was not seen as contributing to the usage component. Is the City pulling the wool over our eyes? You be the judge.
* Adiel Ismail, Mountview.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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