JHB Society for the Blind claims rights violations over service cuts

Droplets of water seen falling from a tap

3 minutes

The Johannesburg Society for the Blind says their human rights have been violated. They say they have not had access to clean running water for the past five years and have been without electricity for over 15 months.

The revelation comes as the country celebrates Human Rights Month.

The City of Johannesburg disconnected the Public Benefit Organisation for non-payment. However, the society says although it has been disconnected, it’s still being billed, and the escalating debt runs into millions.

The Johannesburg Ombudsman mediated in the matter last year, but his instructions are yet to be implemented.

“The Johannesburg Society for the Blind has had no water for the last five years and that stems from the billing issues with the City of Johannesburg, the Johannesburg water division. Wherein we were billed on average between R400 000 and R250 000 on a monthly basis and that’s the reason that bill has accumulated to a point where Johannesburg Water cut our water. We’ve been asking City power, please can we be migrated to prepaid electricity, so that we can do a pay as you use, because the residents of this place need electricity. It’s been 16 months; they’ve survived the one winter; we’re heading to the second winter without any form of heating in our rooms. So ours at this point, we would really love to have the entire place converted to solar and get off the grid, so that we don’t have to rely on city power electricity,” says Vangile Nyamathe, CEO at the Johannesburg Society for the Blind.

A non-profit organisation, the Sharing Kindness Foundation, that assists the vulnerable with their municipal debt, believes the City of Johannesburg has created its own billing crisis.

“The City of Johannesburg has created their own billing crisis; there’s no reason for them to have a billing crisis at all. Legally, they’re supposed to remove illegally prescribed debt and interest from the accounts; they’re not doing that. They’ve become a law unto themselves, and the problem is, they’re trying to force people, or they are forcing people under duress to sign acknowledgements of debt to debt that are actually prescribed by law. Well, they’ve got a sap programme that’s over 50-years-old. If today it’s the 13th of March 2025, then the debt on accounts on which VAT is charged is over three years, so the 13th of March 2022, anything older than that, people shouldn’t be signing acknowledgement of debt; on debt that’s older than three years, it’s illegal what they’re doing,” says Sharing Kindness Foundation co-founder, Michael Langwood.