People who are frustrated with lack of service delivery and reports of corruption are asking if they can stop paying their rates and taxes to the municipality and create a trust fund for this purpose.
Please be aware that withholding payment is not lawful according to the Constitutional Court and the municipality can and will take action against homeowners who follow this course of action by cutting off your services. If you lodge a rates dispute for your electricity or water via the proper channels, then the municipality may not cut off the service while the dispute is being investigated, but you have to keep paying the normal amount for the services you receive in the interim.
For ratepayers to withhold payment as a town, you have to prove that the service has collapsed entirely. and that the trust fund are providing the service instead. Our refuse removal may be a few days late or miss a week, but it isn’t sufficient to claim collapse.
In some small towns where this action has been legally successful due to total collapse, the residents have withheld rates and taxes and hired trucks and people to manage and perform the service themselves, such as water reticulation, refuse removal and street cleaning. Hopefully we can avoid that.
We suggest at this point for you to contact your ward councillor and tell him what you want done.
Alternatively, consider becoming a member of the Plettenberg Bay Ratepayers Association to give more strength to our arm. The stronger our supporter community, the better our ability to enforce accountability and clean governance.
