Poor municipal services and unfairness

They provide poor services in my area “Westonaria Ext 10”. We pay for services they don’t deliver. When I bought my house i was told to pay R2000+ to open the municipality account (which i paid, because I needed to get services). I pay my monthly services.

Later in 2023 they added R5000 on account, which they call “tax rebate” and expect us to pay in short period of time without engaging with the community. Now some of us owes the municipality that R5000 (with interests).

To the matter even worse is now the municipality have handed our account to a third party without our converns and thats breach of POPIA act. Now that third party keeps send out sms’s to say we must pay or else they cut our services (they refer to electricity). How can the municipality do that, where is the “batho pele” approach.

At the moment most South Africans are financially struggling, paying living expenses is hard and depressing. I personally don’t have extra R5000 source because even my income is not enough to feed my family and pay the forever rising living expenses.

Some of us are even considering selling our houses because we are not coping. The municipality is not helping us, they demand, pressurise us while they expect us to understand their failure to deliver services.

Is it fair or lawful to do that? RandWest need to be audited