Jhb defends prepaid meters

2009-09-02 20:07

Johannesburg - Before the installation of prepaid meters in Phiri, Soweto, the City of Johannesburg was making huge losses on water payments, the Constitutional Court heard on Wednesday.

Advocate Gilbert Marcus said meters were legally introduced in terms of by-laws, with consultation with the community, and the meters had to be approved by the SA Bureau of Standards.

He was arguing on behalf of the City of Johannesburg in a case brought by a group of Phiri residents about the lawfulness of prepaid meters.

If the by-laws did not cover how the water supply be cut off, he said the Municipal Systems Act gave municipalities the right to make reasonable decisions on the performance of its functions.

In response to residents' complaints about how their water was cut off, he said when the meter started running out of money, there was a visual warning and a physical warning in that water flow became intermittent.

He said that under the “deemed consumption” system that preceded the meters, people were charged according to their estimated use – 20 kilolitres a month.

Residents complained that even if they used less water, they were still charged the same flat rate and had no way of monitoring their consumption to detect leaks.

The city had been losing huge amounts of water due to wastage and undetected leaks and from non-payment by boycotting consumers.

Indulgence

When the city decided to remove the “deemed consumption” system from Phiri, they offered residents either a prepaid meter or a stand pipe. The prepaid meters were taken up by 99% of the residents.

Marcus rejected the submission that more affluent residents of Johannesburg were treated differently by getting water access on credit and by having a process of representation to turn to before being cut off.

The Phiri residents had complained they were cut off without the benefit of these processes and that the city’s system of offering a visit to a social worker to get an indulgence did not always work.

He said if people who had access to credit did not pay their bill, not only was their electricity cut off, but they lost their deposit, had to pay a reconnection charge, paid a new higher deposit, and paid a penalty.

They might also be referred to debt collection or blacklisted.

Allocation

Saying it was discriminatory to give Parktown residents different options to those of Phiri was like “comparing apples to pears” because those in arrears on the credit system suffered far harsher consequences.

“In Parktown there wasn’t a problem of unaccounted for water. In Parktown there wasn’t a rates boycott.”

He said the issue for Phiri residents was not about being cut off, but about using up their free water allocation.

A group of Phiri residents was asking the court to give them the choice of prepaid or credit access to water, as well as to order the city to raise the amount of free water they get.

Every household in South Africa gets six kilolitres of water free, but the Phiri residents said this was not enough.

They proposed that those who were more able to pay for water forfeit the free water and that the allowance be transferred to people too poor to buy more water.

- SAPA