A pattern is already emerging in my neck of the woods. If you buy for >R400 then the City deducts R200 for the service fees and then the rest is spent on electricity. The R200 seems to not attract VAT.
So folks with solar would have to buy for R400 every month.
Die wet van die Transvaal still applies after all these years.
It’s been going around in circles, but yes. Seems like they’re contemplating scrapping it. “They” being the same members in council that introduced it. But I have heard City Power advocating to keep it as it is needed to maintain the infrastructure.
We discussed this the other day. I, personally, have no problem paying for this. The problem that I have is that in order to fully settle my R230 fixed costs (R200 excl remember) I need to purchase R430 worth of ‘electricity’ as the way it was implemented means that it’s split between units and fixed costs until you get to R430. Not end of the world, but that means I’m buying 73units each month just to be sure to cover the fixed costs and not be disconnected where I’m only consuming 30-40 a month.
But I also bought in the low bracket in May and June to offset the increase, so now I’m sitting with 680kWh of which I only consume ~30-40 per month but will buy 73 a month…
It’s R400, if the R30 reduction makes you feel any better, and I have the receipt to prove it. They take off R200 for the surcharge and the VAT all gets taken off together. For me it’s just a little bit more electricity than I need for my long term average month, so not too bad. Except, like you, I have a credit sitting on my meter, but that will get me through some rainy days at some point.
I didn’t hear anybody say anything about scrapping the surcharge. I heard somebody say they would “review” the charges and the way they are collected.
This is politicianese for doing nothing. All they promised to do was think about it, to “apply one’s mind” as a judge once put it. So fine, they’ll think about it, but since they have no chance of balancing the books with out, it is going to stay. And it will likely increase next year.
You mind sending it to me via PM? I’m too kak scared of getting disconnected for not paying it fully, but I’ll also test it out next week with a R400 to see.
the R30 does actually make me feel better 
as that means buying 62 kWh instead of 73 kWh.
I’ve got no problem with it. I don’t mind paying them a couple hundred to have them as an extra battery. I would have just preferred them either taking the surcharge off first or putting it on the municipal bill. That way I would have gladly paid my R230 each month and buy electricity when I need it.
But I am also being the definition of “kla met 'n wit brood onder die arm .” as there’s people to which this charge is having a much larger impact than me not wanting to buy some units because I don’t need it.
Yeah. I’d rather they just put it on the bill and left me to run my own meter. In reality it may not make a big difference.
Well that’s a nice metaphor.
The trouble with COJ is that in theory they have everything in place. Relief packages are available. But the people who need that relief don’t know. The system is broken. Councillors sit in sessions whete these packages are discussed, but they don’t get the information back to the ward, and there’s no way the ward committee can broadcast that information to everybody who needs it. At best you can get them to send a message out on WhatsApp, which is nice if you can afford data and belong to the right groups.
The City knows that a lot of people qualify for relief but have not registered. There has to be a way to get this information to people and tell them to tell their friends. And mobile offices so that people don’t have to scrape taxi fare together and pay a baby sitter.
I should shut up. Where I used to work they had a saying - you have the vision, you get the job.
How many majors has CoJ had in the last 5 years as an example?
Managing the powerhouse province of SA, is not for the greedy. They WILL see their backsides inevitably.
Sort that + no more frivolous politics, coupled with dedication to service = more people will be happy than unhappy.
Done. Though it takes a bit of arithmetic to confirm it all because there is a single entry for VAT, and that is VAT on the R200 and VAT on the units - 62.5 of them.
I agree about the frivolity of politics in the City. In fact the word I would use is childishness. They are like a bunch of kids arguing in a playground.
Ag! I typed up a whole lot more, but it was so disheartening that I decided I don’t want to talk about this because it will just give me ulcers or something.
Saw this this morning, yeah yeah, it is BD, but still, where there is smoke …
Imagine “they” don’t get Joburg fixed … nope, nope, not going there.
The non-payment issue is not news. But maybe it’s not big enough news.
When Herman Mashaba was mayor (so 2016 to 2019) he wrote a rather pointed public letter to the institute of chartered accountants, saying that he thought that their members were very poorly trained. He said this because, he said, there were multiple JSE listed companies in Sandton that were not paying their municipal accounts and neither their own accountants nor their auditors seemed to have noticed.
City Power have been cutting off Telkom premises. A whole mall in Lenasia was disconnected for bypassing of meters. Embassies, country clubs, hotels, not to mention the common or garden domestic offenders. There’s a lot of it going on.
When Mashaba was mayor a residential complex and a mall with illegal, undocumented electricity connections were uncovered. Whoever owned the complex had had the cheek to put pre-paid meters in. So the residents diligently paid for electricity, but the money was wasn’t going to the City.
There was a big, up market complex in Midrand found to have an illegal and unauthorised connection to Jhb Water pipes.
This non-payment and active theft is widespread. It is a big problem for the City.
Where I find my heart strings being tugged is with the residential complexes that fall foul of the city. Not so much the complex, but the residents. Often they pay the body corporate in good faith, but then the body corporate somehow doesn’t get around to paying the city. Or, as happened to a family member of mine, the treasurer diverts the money into a bank account that they control and then does a runner.