Durban — The Phoenix Civic Movement leader Vivian Pillay has slammed eThekwini Municipality over its revised tariffs, and said they were still unaffordable to ordinary residents.
This was after mayor Mxolisi Kaunda announced the revised hikes during his Budget, delivered on Wednesday, as pro-poor. He was speaking at a press conference on Thursday at the Durban City Hall.
Pillay asked the municipality to engage more with communities or completely scrap the tariffs.
“These tariffs are very high, while service delivery is poor. What are the people paying for?” he asked.
Pillay said residents of Durban were expected to pay more for poor service delivery, and that these tariffs were nothing but a way for those in government to continue living like kings, while ratepayers suffered.
Durban Coalition co-ordinator Desmond D’Sa called for a decent transition to the governing of the city.
“All this money they are asking for must be used for job creation and for proper service delivery. These tariff increases are a slap in the face to ratepayers.
“We want government of the people, by the people, and we are tired of these politicians playing with our lives,” D’Sa added.
Kaunda expressed his gratitude to the residents of eThekwini for voicing their concerns around the proposed tariff increases. He said his “balanced budget” was designed to cater for the interests of all eThekwini residents. He expressed his gratitude to eThekwini councillors, the majority of whom he said adopted it with a unanimous decision.
“When crafting this budget, we took into consideration the tough economic climate and the catastrophic disasters that have plagued our city. The decision to revise the tariffs was also informed by the thorough engagements we had with various communities and stakeholders who made it clear that the proposed tariffs were unaffordable.”
Kaunda said this would be the municipality’s tool to help with service delivery challenges, and was also a response to the plight of the poor, and would help in job creation after jobs were shed due to Covid-19, the July looting, and the April 2022 floods that caused devastation in Durban.
Kaunda said he was concerned by service delivery efforts being hampered by the hijacking of municipal vehicles. The mayor said the city strove for equitable load shedding across all sectors of eThekwini residents. He added that some pump stations had been equipped with generators so that they would be able to continue pumping water even during load shedding.
He apologised to uMlazi residents about bus delays and inconveniences caused and said that the problems were caused by the contracted bus company, and not the municipality. Kaunda said the city had added 130 extra buses to its fleet, and that would bring relief to uMlazi and other areas.
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Daily News