City defends self on billing mess

Tempers flared when the City of Joburg appeared before the National Consumer Tribunal over its "chaotic" billing crisis that has cost taxpayers tens of millions.

Adolf Kronfuss, 67, from Bertrams, central Johannesburg, told how the municipality's failure to resolve his inaccurate lights bill had led to him suffering business losses and laying off 75 employees, and how he had been admitted to hospital suffering from stress.

Appearing before the tribunal in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, yesterday, the city asked the tribunal to scrap 45 compliance notices after the National Consumer Commission slapped it with fines for failing to resolve billing complaints from residents for months.

In August last year, national consumer commissioner Mamodupi Mohlala issued compliance notices varying from R20000 to R1-million, depending on the seriousness of complaints.

The complaints ranged from exorbitant billing for water to unpaid pension rebates.

The billing crisis, which worsened when the country's richest municipality implemented the R580-million Project Phakama three years ago, gave residents sleepless nights when their services were cut off illegally, then were affected by strikes and intervention by former cooperative governance minister Sicelo Shiceka.

Kronfuss said his electricity bill had been inflated from R1200 a month to R20000 a month last year. He had approached the consumer commission.

After a year of receiving inaccurate bills, the city has told him he is in arrears totalling R236000. This led to investors in his once-booming businesses pulling out, and his being forced to close down.

Employees at the municipality had been rude when he had complained, he said.

"They said, 'You white one, you stole from us, now we are stealing from you.'"

Advocate Michelle le Roux, who represented the City of Joburg, asked the tribunal to scrap the compliance notices because, she said, certain procedures were not followed in the issuing of the fines.

She said Mohlala had failed to investigate before issuing fines and that meetings of the municipality and the consumer commission last year did not count as investigations.

Quoting sections of the National Consumer Act, Le Roux said Mohlala had no "jurisdiction" to investigate most of the complaints as the consumer legislation existed only after the complaints were laid.

She said compliance notices relating to inaccurate bills should be null and void as failure to bill accurately did not mean the municipality rendered poor service.

A service was what the municipality charged residents for and a bill was "an incident" of the provision, she said.

Mohlala said Le Roux's arguments had no substance, and she worried about the municipality's attitude.

"We would have expected that the city would have spent the time and the effort to sort out the billing problems . rather than coming up with superficial so-called legal arguments."

Mohlala said she was issuing 70 more compliance notices to the metro.

The consumer commission's legal director, Oatlhotse Thupayatlase, said the billing was "chaotic".

He accused municipal officials of having a "negative attitude" towards complaints.

This was after Le Roux earlier argued it should be exempted from the Consumer Act as it was governed by municipal by-laws.