It's time for the community of Phoenix to stand up for their basic Human Rights needs to be met by the eThekwini Municipality.

The Voice of Phoenix (VOP) has heard your call for taking action in our fight for service delivery from the eThekwini Municipality. We understand and sympathize with the daily sufferings in our community and how the water disruptions and electrical faults are causing havoc in our lives.

On Monday 29 January 2024, we will hand over a memorandum to the eThekwini Municipality wherein we demand the uninterrupted services of water and electricity!

Our demands include:

1. Water

• The repeated water outages must be addressed as a matter of extreme urgency and without haste as residents are suffering undue difficulties and hardships as a result - many of the elderly and the infirm are severely prejudiced by the continuous disruptions.
• Water faults that require repairs must strictly be limited to a turnaround time of 24 hours for repair, no time should be wasted in appointing of contractors to attend to the matter. The delay in appointing contractors has an adverse effect on the residents further prejudicing them in receiving the uninterrupted service from Municipality, which would be an indictment on the eThekwini Municipality.
• During the water disruption, the municipality does not dispatch adequate tankers to service the affected areas. The municipality needs to give the Phoenix community ample notification should they deem it necessary to shut off their water supply or undertake repairs to the infrastructure that may affect residents from receiving constant supply of water.
• We demand that any billing errors have occurred on statements to residents that are higher than normal, must be reversed and residents must pay their normal amounts as previously billed. That the billing statements that are sent to ratepayers must be current billing statements.
• We further demand that actual meter readings are taken, and residents are not charged “estimates” which is always overestimated at the loss of cash on hand to the residents.

 

2. Electricity

• Electrical outages, outside the ambit of scheduled load shedding, must be addressed as a matter of urgency as such outages are wholly unacceptable and intolerable to the residents.
• Electrical faults that require repairs must strictly be limited to a turnaround time of 24 hours for repair, no time should be wasted in appointing of contractors to attend to the matter. The delay in appointing contractors has an adverse effect on the residents further prejudicing them in receiving the uninterrupted service from Municipality, which would be an indictment on the eThekwini Municipality.
• The Municipality must take responsibility wherein there is an outage for an extended period to reimburse residents for their loss of food and supplies that have spoiled.

3.       Municipal By-Laws

• A revisit to the by-laws of the eThekwini Municipality with regards to rates and property values as per a Township is demanded.
• Wherein there is electricity and water disconnection and reconnection on residents failing to keep up with their bills, due to the fault of the Municipality and their erroneous billing system, a complete write off on the alleged back payments of water bill must be allowed.
• The Voice Of Phoenix (VPO) demands that, where contractors are appointed to have repairs done, be allowed to provide competent and knowledgeable people to sanction their workmanship VOLUNTARILY in every ward of phoenix and surrounding.
• WE DEMAND A RESPONSE WITHIN 7 DAYS, FAILING WHICH WE WILL TAKE FURTHER STEPS TO HAVE OUR VOICES HEARD.

 

We urge you to act now and sign this petition. We are paying for our services, we should not have to beg for it to be supplied to us residents uninterrupted.