A long, drawn-out battle over a municipal account which had apparently been sorted out and brought to a close, suddenly reappeared in a more threatening form after 12 months.

Ms Marie Peché of Kennington Lodge said that the whole problem started in May 2012. The countless hours she has spent and still spends at the municipality are still to reach final resolution.

In May 2012, Kennington Lodge switched to the then new system of paying their municipal account electronically via FNB Makhado. At first, the bank consultants did this on behalf of the clients and Ms Peché did not notice that the consultant had filled in the stand number as the reference number instead of the account number. “On the June account I noticed that the May account of R6 179 had not been paid and immediately went to the Makhado Municipality. It was found by Ms Gerda Killian that the reference number was incorrect and she arranged that our account be credited with R6 179 and the necessary reversals were seemingly done. This was not corrected on the system of the municipality, however,” Peché said.

The problem kept reoccurring. “I visited the offices numerous times and made phone calls and requested that the necessary reversals be made on the municipality’s system. Sometimes I would speak to a person one day and explain everything, then a few days later, he would say that he had never seen me and did not know anything about the problem,” Peché said. She added that she would really want the municipality to keep track of the history of a problem, so that no misunderstandings could occur between consumers and the municipality.

In October 2012, Peché was given a final amount to pay, so that there would not be any arrears on the account whatsoever. In January 2013, the account was at last also corrected even on the municipal system. There was peace for 12 months or so.

On the December 2013 account, three amounts suddenly appeared under the heading of sundries, with three accompanying VAT amounts. On the January account of this year, a total of R4 284 in arrears was indicated. Peché was told that these were “legal costs”. It was explained to her that the workload at the municipality was very high and that it took very long to rectify incorrect information on their system. Consequently, a summons had been automatically authorized and an amount of R4 284 added to the account. She was told that the summons had been issued erroneously and that the account was up to date and she could ignore it. 

In February, however, a red letter to cut the electricity arrived at Kennington.

Off she went to the municipality again, repeating and explaining the whole story over and over. Peché succeeded in defending their electricity supply. The red letter stated that the disconnection fee would be over R6 500. She also wrote a letter, dated 27 February, to the municipality  to explain the whole situation. The following month another red letter came, dated 24 March. The communication between the different sections at the municipality had failed once again. Meantime, the Ferreiras, the owners of Kennington Lodge, had also joined the attempt to get the municipality to act on the situation. Peché fought  tooth and nail to avoid the power cut in March. But for how long?

The municipality was asked to explain their side concerning the issue of the R4 282 and was investigating the matter at the time of our going to press. The municipality was also requested to comment on what could be done about the challenge of officials telling customers that they would reverse problems but failing to do so, as well as the challenge of the lack of communication between different sections, especially communication with the section responsible for cutting the electricity.