Many people’s accounts have almost doubled or increased by more than 70% – and all were unanimous that an even bigger surprise awaits for this coming month end account.<\/p>\n
The initial post to www.mobserver.co.za<\/em> Facebook Group was made by Rosemarie Luck De Waal, who stated that their normal account is approximately R3 800 per month – and the new account has increased by a staggering 70% to R 6 111.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are pensioners and use a gas stove. My Electricity alone was R3 503. How do we justify this?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n The post received more than 100 comments by Friday morning as many people responded with statements of helplessness and desperation. Others refused to accept it and accused the municipality of a miscalculation.<\/p>\n Another resident, Pierre de Villiers, said the readings were quite accurate according to a device that measures daily electricity usage.<\/p>\n He claimed that he himself calculated the new tariffs and tried to make sense of the increases. He posted the following: \u201cElectricity rates: 50KWH = R0.87, 5 50KWH=R1.65 With the six extra days it is possible that most of us ended up with higher usage placing us in the R1.47 and R1.65 KWH range and the Average 7.41% increase.\u201d<\/p>\n www.mobserver.co.za<\/em> Will clarify the increases on Monday with the municipality and will request feedback to residents.<\/p>\n \u2022 Members of the public who feel they are being ripped off are welcome to share information with www.mobsever.co.za<\/em> by contacting us via our Facebook Group, or you can contact 072 110 2710 or email: yaseen@mobserver.co.za.<\/p>\n Read other stories here:<\/p>\n Video: Mob justice at Ultra City<\/a><\/p>\n Video: Kanonkop Spar kitsbank opgeblaas<\/a><\/p>\n Exclusive video of ATM bombings at Midwater Centre<\/a><\/p>\n Standard Bank ATM bombed at Midwater Centre<\/a><\/p>\n Send a message to our SMS line 33658 or add us onto Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> @Mobserv<\/a> to receive your free daily news updates. You can also WhatsApp us on this number 079\u00a0426 1396<\/p>\n Also check out our Video\u2019s<\/a> on Youtube<\/a> daily!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Residents of Middelburg took to social media this week expressing shock and anger at ridiculously high municipal accounts for rates and taxes in the last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":53161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Yaseen Gaffar","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}