Incorrect Billing / Faulty Meter Escalation

On 10th Sep 2021 – I went to Polokwane Municipality offices to query incorrect water billing that was charged on my parents’ water bill. My query was attended by a lady at Enquiries counter and I was still not happy with feedback provided because when my brother initially escalated incorrect billing of R10,630.07. He was told that a person will come and investigate the matter and no one bothered to provide us with feedback. I was told by the lady that a meter reader was send to my parents house to confirm whether readings billed reconcile with reading on meter. I advised her that I was not happy with the fact that munipality send meter reader instead of technician. I requested that she prints out attached statement for 12 months and tell me whether she doesn’t notice that something is unusual with monthly water billing trends.

My parents water billing from (2020-10 to 2021-04) was averaging at about R116.44 and all of a sudden there was this huge spike and the average jumped from R116.44 to R4,126.25. Now just that spike should have raised concerns from below areas without even sending someone to investigate.

 Billing / Water & Sanitation / Smart Meter Company – Trend with that huge spike warranted for an investigation to be conducted as possible causes would be: o Meter Reader is not doing his job properly and doesn’t take actual readings but instead thumb sucks the figures o Send Technicians to go and investigate why there is such a huge spike  The other observation that I made is that Billing / Water & Sanitation / Smart Meter Company work in silos. I am making this observation because if everyone was working as a unit in ensuring that municipality provides quality services to Polokwane residence then this issue could have been resolved long time ago with any effort from customers.  Now between my brother and I, we had to make multiple trips to your Polokwane offices, escalations to Smart Meter company and that costs a lot of money. Worse I had to travel from GAUTENG to come and solve something that the municipality could have resolved without interaction with us as customers.

 Smart Meter escalations could have been compared against areas were there was a huge spike in water billing. If you look at below you would clearly see that my parents started experiencing water issues since March 2021

Back to my visit on the 10th Sep 2021, enquiries consultant send me to office number 110 which is Water & Sanitation office. I spoke to Mpho regarding my issue and she contacted Malekutu who is a technician to come and investigate. Malekutu assigned two technicians to meet up with me at 15:30 on the 10th Sep 2021. They conducted their investigations and found that the meter hasn’t been working for a long time and also that the reader screen was not displaying any values. They advised that they will be filling a report with municipality on Monday the 13th Sep 2021. On Saturday the 11th Sep 2021, I received a call from someone and he said that he was send by the municipality to come and install Pre-Paid water meter. I meet up with the technicians and they installed the meter and gave me form that needed to be submitted at municipal offices so that they activate the meter.

Now why is it that there were readings that were recorded by the Meter Reader (person) but technicians found that meter hasn’t been working for a long time? It is clear that the meter reader as just inflating readings and that should be contravention of employment guidelines. The guy who installed pre-paid also advised me that he would be filling another report because it seems technicians from Smart Meter who were attending to Job cards shared above were not doing their jobs properly.

In Closing

 My parents are 79 yrs (Mom) and 89 yrs (Dad) and I don’t expect them to be stressing about things that are caused by Billing / Water & Sanitation / Smart Meter Company incompetence  Lot of customers spend unnecessary hours travelling to munipality offices to address issues that are in most cases caused by Billing / Water & Sanitation / Smart Meter Company s incompetence and it high time that someone takes responsibility and address this  Municipality received a report from technicians on Monday the 13th Sep 2021 and till to date we have not received any feedback. So I will be providing munipality with further grace period of Friday 17th Sep 2021 and if by Monday the 20th Sep 2021, we still haven’t received feedback then I will be left with no other option but to take the legal route.  1 kilolitre = 1000 litres. Hence, we require 1000 litres to make 1 kilolitre. Note: In questions involving basic conversions of units of time from one unit to another, we should know about a few specific conversions. Now how is it possible that pensioners can spend water equating to R10,630.07?  Can municipality advise how many litres equated to R10,630.07 and what kind of residential types would consume such?  I also request that the municipality provide me with photos for the past 12 or 24 months which shows meter reader taking readings at my parents’ home. Which days does municipality conduct meter readings in our area?  I also request that Smart Meter collaborate with munipality and better serve our communities.  Why is it that there is lack of communications with regards to water shortages/cuts? From 15/09/2021 until today, there is no water in our area and no one even bothered to notify community.