Fedusa slams water, power cuts

Fedusa has come out against water and power cuts by municipalities in order to force businesses and households to pay disputed bills.

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Johannesburg - The Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) has come out against water and power cuts by municipalities in order to force businesses and households to pay disputed bills.

It said this week that it believed these bills were sometimes inflated. And it described the cuts as a human rights violation.

This follows the Thabazimbi Municipality in Limpopo cutting electricity and water supply to Anglo American’s Amandelbult mine and residential complexes.

The mine’s rates and taxes were increased from R660 000 to R114 million a year in July, and despite it contesting the figures, the municipality cut supply to the mine and its residential complexes, which house workers.

In a letter to employees in September, mine management explained they had filed an urgent court application as they could not foot the bill for a 16 000 percent increase.

“An immediate payment of R19 million for Amandelbult is demanded by the municipality of Thabazimbi. This cannot happen and our mine cannot afford this sort of payout,” the mine’s senior general manager William Taylor said in the letter.

The federation said situations such as these were widespread and showed that municipalities did not care about the implications of such drastic steps.

“They just bill you and say pay now and argue later. They don’t care,” Fedusa general secretary Dennis George said.

He explained that the actions were hurting businesses not only in Thabazimbi, but elsewhere in the country where prices were inflated.

Last year, President Jacob Zuma promised citizens that there would be a national intervention on the Joburg municipal billing crisis, which had gone on for about three years. Residents were slapped with massive utility bills which were later blamed on the implementation of a new billing system.

However, in the Thabazimbi case, the mine said the authority had informed the mine it considered the increment process and rates fair.

Acting municipal manager Kgopolang Booysen said on Wednesday that they were correcting their billing system, which had for years undercharged mines in the area. “Amandelbult has been paying R10 000 a month. We said to them we have been undercharging you, it could be that we were sleeping on the job. Now we correct the tariff. Don’t look at it as an increase,” he said.

Thabazimbi was one of the municipalities threatened with bulk electricity-supply interruptions by Eskom for owing R121m in August.

Booysen said although the tariff had already been approved and the financial year had commenced, they had offered the mining companies operating from Thabazimbi a 30 percent rebate on their rates, but none had taken up the offer.

He said all the mines had been paying less than R20 000 towards rates monthly and the value of their land and rateable properties amounted to nearly R400m.

George said the cuts not only hurt the economy, but business and households too. “Securing an uninterrupted and stable supply of electricity and water is essential and necessary for any economy to function,” he said.

The Star