A R30 000 Buffalo City Metro (BCM) water bill that just keeps on growing, has left Dave and Beverley Miles, of King William’s Town, broke and in a state of distress.
Miles, a lecturer at Lovedale College, who suffers from an illness which leaves him tired, said their water bill had been low for a few years, until 2013, when a bill for R14000 arrived.
Miles said: “They had not read the meter and for two years we never got an account. We were paying what we thought was our average use.
“I said to them you can’t do this, they said they would sort it out but I must pay a certain amount.
“We started paying what we thought was a fair amount of R1500. Our normal water bill was R800.
“We figured the price of water had gone up,” he said.
Then in June, their water bill suddenly doubled to R30000 and BCM started cutting off their electricity and demanding R2200 a month – and a further R1500 on top of that.
Beverley said: “So we paid R3700 in July and this month they cut us off and told my husband to sign a letter of indebtedness to keep the lights on.
She said: “Now they are demanding I pay R4000 a month.
“How can they say this without doing the water reading?”
Mills said he got a BCM official to come and look for leaks but they had found none.
The couple said BCM wrote to them saying the meter was accurate but the readings had been inconsistent due to rubbish in the meter box.
Beverley, who is a secretary for a local church, said: “I went to work in tears after paying my entire salary to the municipality. I have no money!”
The couple said: “Everybody around us has the same problem. They don’t have the money to pay these huge bills.”
Responding to Saturday Dispatch questions, BCM spokesman Sibusiso Cindi said water was charged according to an approved tariff.
Where there was no “consumption or reading listed” a minimum “interim” charge for 20 kilolitres was drawn up.
However, interim charges could also be based on clients’ average usage over 12 months. — mikel@dispatch.co.za