POWER CUT OFF

I feel the punishment for not paying my municipal bill on time is extremely harsh. No notices are in the post box to warn me with a final notice. No phone calls or even an email by customer service. I was cut off while not been home for a few days. Now see the scenario, the alarm system dies with ADT, and they are not aware it would seem as no one contacted us. Gate motor stops working, so we get locked out of our property when backup battery dies. Best of all the freezer with about R2500 worth of food goes warm. I go to Centurion town council on December 24th at 08h30 to pay and request re connection, only to be told that the system is down and I can come back on the 3rd Jan 2019. Back home I go to sort out the mess. Rotten meat and vegetables. Swimming pool is breeding tadpoles and mosquitoes and i cant switch it on. Chlorine is not ****ing the pests without running the pump. Lawn is dying and I have a 5000L tank of Rail water that I cannot pump. The reconnection fee still has to come into the equation. More that R500 I presume. Not even the Receiver of Revenue *****s you up so badly for a month late payment. A certain political party in SA would have maybe come and trashed the property and beat me up. But why must the City councils dish out so much damage to our pockets. I'm sure there are many others that are on holiday and will be returning to this similar scenario, totally unaware. When you are down you still get kicked. Can the cut offs please be suspended and can the councils find a better method of collecting the money. I don't think it takes more than an hour to re connect in 1st world countries, I think it's done with the push of a button. Here they have to send a contractor and pay him to connect or disconnect.