The Heideveld Residents Association in collaboration with civil society is hosting an urgent public meeting today at Heideveld library to discuss issues relating to high water bills, faulty water meters and electricity. The stakeholders that will be in attendance include the Poor Flat Dwellers Association, Housing Assembly and the Decent Housing for All campaign.

Vanessa Sauls, a member of the newly formed Heideveld Residents Association said the residents from the surrounding areas can attend the meeting to list their grievances about the poor service delivery by the City of Cape Town. They intend to challenge the City of Cape Town by taking them to court over their dissatisfaction of the way in which the city is unwilling to respond to their grievances.

‘’We are not just talking about the new development in Heideveld. On the Cape Flats as a whole, whether it’s Heideveld, Manenberg, Mitchells Plain, Delft, Hanover Park, we are all sitting with the same problems,” she said.

‘’People are experiencing problems with these new blue meters. Our people are sitting with high water bills now the water meter device is being managed and monitored by the city,” she stressed.

Sauls complained about the city giving Heideveld residents only 200 kilolitres of water instead of 350 kilolitres.

‘’In Heideveld everybody does not get the daily allocation of 350 kilolitres – instead 200 kilolitres of water are given to each household. If the allocated amount is not used up by the next day, then the meter shuts down completely. My question is, if the meter shuts down at a certain time, how is it possible for the city to still bill those people?”

Sauls further said they have received complaints from their WhatsApp group where residents say their unpaid water or municipal account bill is being deducted from the electricity that they purchase from the city.

‘’If you don’t pay your water bill or municipal account, it then gets deducted from your electricity. These water meters are problematic and it’s not just about the amount of water we get. Whether you have water in your meter remaining the water meter goes blank, its shuts off.

Sauls says she wrote a formal complaint to the city about the problems faced by the residents. She stated that, even though the city has SMS line, WhatsApp and email systems in place to deal with people’s queries, the city does not respond.

‘’We have a WhatsApp group for the Heideveld Residents Association and each day we get people reporting that they don’t have water and when they report on the city’s SMS number that number is of no use at all, they don’t respond.

‘’I have written a complaint on that matter and I have never received a response. Then they have a WhatsApp group and emails where they don’t respond. You wait for days for city’s people to come out in order to fix the water meters. The city fixes it or replace it but a few weeks or months later they are experiencing the same problem. But the water bills in itself is the biggest problem here on the cape flats.”

The City declined to comment.

By: Rachel Mohammed / VOC