Mamelodi Concerned Residents for Service Delivery leader Oupa Mtshwene has urged Mamelodi residents not to pay rent to the City of Tshwane municipality.
He was addressing residents at the meeting held at Uoane Primary School in Mamelodi east, Tshwane at the weekend.
This as they will be paying for something that they do not know or understand.
“Residents are being cheated by the municipality” said Mtshwene.
“The municipality no longer delivers its bills to the community,” he said.
Mtshwene said all that the City of Tshwane municipality delivers to the residents are “letters of final demand,”
He described the fact that residents, especially elderly ones, are forced to go to the municipal offices to make enquiries regarding their rent matters.
“Elderly residents who are pensioners and poor unemployed orphans must not pay rent.
Mtshwene told Tshwane Talks that the old age grant received by the elderly from SASSA is not meant for paying rent but it is meant for food and transport purposes.
Mtshwene called on young orphaned residents to also consult his organisation for help regarding rent matters.
“No municipality is more powerful than residents,” he said.
He urges residents not to be afraid as his organisation is there to protect them.
Mtshwene complained about the fact that mayor Cilliers Brink never consults them as residents but takes decisions unilaterally.
“We don’t actually know the mayor.
We only know him through newspaper reports,” said Mtshwene.
Mtshwene said since the mayor has not reached an agreement with residents regarding switching off of water and electricity supply to households, residents must not allow these switch-offs to happen.
“We won the rent court case against the municipality way back in 2018 at the Pretoria High Court.
The outcome was that the municipality must meet our demands and scrap all the debts related to rent,” he said.
He announced that he and his supporters will be marching to Tshwane House to deliver their demands so that the mayor would get to know them better and come to our community of Mamelodi in the near future.
“I have never paid rent for 26 years now since there is no honesty in what the municipality is billing residents and I will never pay it any time soon,” said Mtshwene determinedly.