City of Windhoek Must Pay Back Overcharged Electricity Fees

THE Minister of Mines and Energy has now pronounced himself on the controversial issue of the overcharging of City of Windhoek residents on electricity tariffs since July this year.

Speaking this week, Minister Erkki Nghimtina said the Windhoek City Council had overcharged residents by half a cent per unit since July. This is a sequel to a dispute between the Electricity Control Board (ECB) and the Windhoek City Council on the thorny issue of overcharging consumers.The ECB had taken issue with the Council on this point, and the Council in turn defended its position, and maintained it had not overcharged residents through imposing wrongful tariffs.No Municipal spokespersons were available to comment on the Minister’s statement yesterday.The question now is how or whether Windhoek residents will be reimbursed the difference between what they were charged and what they should have been charged.Nghimtina said that “the increased levy charge from 0.45 cents to 0.5 cents per unit …from July 12006 on the consumers should not be charged and should be rectified”.Just how this should be done is the contentious issue now.There is some talk that the additional payments made by the electricity consumers in the City would be put into a separate fund to offset price increases in the future, but this is not strictly fair to the ratepayers of Windhoek, who now find themselves out of pocket due to higher than anticipated electricity bills in the past few months.Nghimtina has urged the ECB and Municipal officials to meet in order to amend what has now been confirmed as the City’s “unapproved” schedule and tariffs and rectify “all the errors and iron out all the discrepancies that might have occurred and that the eventual tariffs would fall within the ambit of the increase (originally) approved by the ECB board”.Hopefully the new Electricity Bill, which is expected to be tabled next year, will clearly stipulate rules and regulations with regard to tariffs, so that a repeat performance of the overcharging of residents by the City of Windhoek doesn’t occur in future.It is almost certain that the City will deem it “too complex” to reimburse residents for the overcharging since July, and argue that the additional money should be placed in a fund to offset future increases.This, however, is not fair to consumers.One would expect it is not an insurmountable task for the Municipality’s accounting division to calculate the overpayments that consumers have made for the past few months and credit the individuals accordingly.It is to be hoped that the Municipality of Windhoek will address this issue as soon as there is a spokesperson available to do so.In addition, they owe a public apology to their residents.Issues such as this should also be kept in mind when the next set of local government elections comes around.It cannot be said that people approving unauthorised electricity tariff hikes for consumers have their interests at heart.This is a sequel to a dispute between the Electricity Control Board (ECB) and the Windhoek City Council on the thorny issue of overcharging consumers.The ECB had taken issue with the Council on this point, and the Council in turn defended its position, and maintained it had not overcharged residents through imposing wrongful tariffs.No Municipal spokespersons were available to comment on the Minister’s statement yesterday.The question now is how or whether Windhoek residents will be reimbursed the difference between what they were charged and what they should have been charged.Nghimtina said that “the increased levy charge from 0.45 cents to 0.5 cents per unit …from July 12006 on the consumers should not be charged and should be rectified”.Just how this should be done is the contentious issue now.There is some talk that the additional payments made by the electricity consumers in the City would be put into a separate fund to offset price increases in the future, but this is not strictly fair to the ratepayers of Windhoek, who now find themselves out of pocket due to higher than anticipated electricity bills in the past few months.Nghimtina has urged the ECB and Municipal officials to meet in order to amend what has now been confirmed as the City’s “unapproved” schedule and tariffs and rectify “all the errors and iron out all the discrepancies that might have occurred and that the eventual tariffs would fall within the ambit of the increase (originally) approved by the ECB board”.Hopefully the new Electricity Bill, which is expected to be tabled next year, will clearly stipulate rules and regulations with regard to tariffs, so that a repeat performance of the overcharging of residents by the City of Windhoek doesn’t occur in future.It is almost certain that the City will deem it “too complex” to reimburse residents for the overcharging since July, and argue that the additional money should be placed in a fund to offset future increases.This, however, is not fair to consumers.One would expect it is not an insurmountable task for the Municipality’s accounting division to calculate the overpayments that consumers have made for the past few months and credit the individuals accordingly.It is to be hoped that the Municipality of Windhoek will address this issue as soon as there is a spokesperson available to do so.In addition, they owe a public apology to their residents.Issues such as this should also be kept in mind when the next set of local government elections comes around.It cannot be said that people approving unauthorised electricity tariff hikes for consumers have their interests at heart.