Taxpayers can no longer be held accountable for the non-payment of municipal accounts to Eskom. After numerous attempts to resolve frequent municipal power outages and to bring the serious problem to the attention of the Department of Cooperative Governance, the FF Plus has decided to lodge a complaint with the Public Protector (PP) against the municipalities of Dipaliseng (Balfour, Greylingstad, Grootvlei), Govan Mbeki (Bethal, Charl Cilliers, Embalenhle, Evander, Kinross, Leandra, Secunda, Trichardt) and Lekwa (Morgenzon, Standerton).
Due to the maladministration of these municipalities, taxpayers who faithfully pay their accounts are subjected to power outages that sometimes last up to twelve hours.
The FF Plus is inundated with complaints from residents of these municipalities who have repeatedly lost their frozen foods as a result of the poor scheduling of power outages or the sheer lack of any notices of load shedding.
Business enterprises that were allowed to continue with their operations during the Covid-19 lockdown have also suffered great losses as a result of the power outages.
The FF Plus is of the opinion that the PP must investigate this serious matter and make recommendations on how residents can lodge claims with municipal insurance funds so that municipalities will be forced to compensate residents who suffered damages, regardless of what the damages entail.
Read the original article in Afrikaans by Werner Weber on FF Plus
South Africa Today – South Africa News
