The worst non payers or payment defaulters in the City of Johannesburg have been threatened with the removal of all cables and meters unless they pay. The water utility is saying the same thing also threatening to cut off water supply.
The City Of Johannesburg owes around R60 billion ($3.5billion) to the various service providers and have highlighted that R1 billion in utility payments is owed by certain properties. Properties valued at over R100 million, Residential properties valued at over R5 million, commercial businesses and government owned SOE's.
The amounts owed are eye watering and one can only presume the defaulters have a reason for not paying and most likely there are disputes with their billing. Any residential property knows if you do not pay your utility bill within 7 days you are cut off as this is another money making racket having to pay fees for reconnection. Surely this should be negotiated using common sense so they get to a point of having a reset because we all know when you have staff who are at best challenged and cannot fulfil basic needs mistakes are bound to happen.
If a high valued property costing R100 million which must be an apartment block owes a large sum of money the entire block is cut off so what they are saying about defaulters may not be so clear cut. I am on the side of the City of Johannesburg in this case if there are no disputes and you clearly owe.
I have heard stories that certain SOE's have illegal connections running from their power supply so SOE's owing money would be obvious as the electricity is being stolen with no accountability.
A friend of mine owns a factory and had his access to electricity and water removed after he was getting excessive billing and was receiving threats of disconnection. He took things into his own hands and invested R700K into an off grid solar installation. He then also had his water replaced with a borehole so he removed all utilities and now has no bills, but it did cost him a large investment.
I know what it is like to be on the wrong side of the law even though it is of no fault of your own. I found our property not receiving any monthly bill after having a pay as you go meter installed, but never installed fully. We were receiving power from the grid without having to buy electricity for the pay as you go. This took me over 3 years to get their attention and fix this problem and as long as I was waiting on them I was never in a serious rush. I had the reference numbers each time so I was in the clear with regard to blame and eventually paid a $1K fine which I was very happy to do having received free electricity for longer than 3 years. If I had to guess I would have had top pay back $12K if they had done their jobs properly.