Reading Time: < 1 minute
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) CEO Wayne Duvenage says the City of Joburg’s measures of collecting unpaid rates and services bills from indebted ratepayers at roadblocks, are out of desperation and will not work.
The City plans to post finance officers at certain roadblocks in an effort to collect outstanding revenue for water, electricity, rates and taxes.
Duvenage says harassing citizens like that will not be effective.
“When you are in the financial dire situation that they are in, they are going to do things like this but we saw this with e-tolls a number of years ago. It didn’t work and it’s not going to work.”
“We are not saying don’t pay your bills. We need our cities to work, but right now we are just asking the city to use other mechanisms to collect this debt, switch off the electricity, the water. Do what you got to do in that regard, have your billing queries handled properly,” adds Duvenage.
City of Johannesburg on a mission to recover billions owed in municipal services
In May the City of Joburg stated that it is looking at ways to give some relief to ratepayers including deferring their municipal accounts.
