The City of Cape Town is getting the wind ahead of its decision to introduce a so-called drought tax.
Erika Botha-Rossouw, FF Plus councilor for the City of Cape Town, says it is unfair to punish residents to pay a levy because they met the call to save water and the time has come for the DA and his mayor of Cape Town, Patricia de Lille to accept responsibility for the crisis.
Botha-Rossouw said it runs counter to the accepted principle that users have to pay for what they use. Capetonians now have to pay because they do not use. The FF Plus voted against the charges.
According to Botha-Rossouw, the FF Plus has already warned the DA during a council meeting in 2011 that disaster around water is Cape Town’s land if action is not taken prematurely and precautionary measures are taken.
“Mr. André Fourie, then councilor of the FF Plus for Cape Town, addressed this warning to the DA on 1 September 2011. However, he not only warned but made practical, workable suggestions, such as the sinking of boreholes, desalination and the dumping of mountain water that ends up in the sea.”
“This warning and suggestions have been ignored and abandoned. By chance, this is exactly what the DA is doing to try to prepare for the crisis. Still, it has not even begun. It is only at this critical late stage that there are plans.”
“I personally asked mayor De Lille in a council meeting on May 26, 2016, whether the city is sending out a strategy on the water crisis, what its extent and what the contingency plans are.”
“The astonishing and clever answer from De Lille was that I probably live on another planet because there is no water crisis in the Cape.”
“The time has come for De Lille and DA to accept full responsibility for the crisis. Instead, the already heavily burdened residents are now being punished,” said Botha-Rossouw.
Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
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