HERMANUS – All political parties in the Overstrand council, except the Land Party, this morning supported a motion that the municipality’s debt collection policy be revised. The widely supported motion was brought by veteran DA councillor and former Mayor, Dudley Coetzee. He said the municipality now generally uses a 60/40 ratio when it came to recovering outstanding debt. In simple terms, if your municipal account is outstanding and you are a pre-paid electricity customer of the municipality, they will take 60% of the money you spend on electricity and use that towards your debt. You will get electricity for the remaining 40%.
The municipality however does have the discretion to change this ratio if they think the debt is irrecoverable and apparently they often do. Coetzee says what happens in practice is that the ratio is often pushed to 90/10, in other words, the debtor then only gets 10% worth of electricity.
Coetzee told council this was counterproductive and led to people to simply stop buying electricity. He suggested that the general ratio be kept at 60/40, but that should the municipality need to become more punitive, the ratio be capped at 70/30.
Both the ANC and the EFF enthusiastically supported the DA motion, but the Land Party did not vote on the motion. It is not yet clear when the changes will be implemented.
What do you think?
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