We’d like to give some brief feedback on what the assembled GUTs committee has been working on over the past few months since inception. It should be noted that the very substantial work done so far by everyone has been entirely voluntary and our resident lawyer (Dolf Louw) is also providing his services on a Pro Bono basis. We therefore ask you to please bear with us as we all have day jobs and/or other commitments and only have limited time to spare.
The biggest issue by far has been getting to grips with the proper legal processes. Also, extensive work has been done researching TWKM’s budget promulgations since 2005. A full audit revealed that the TWKM failed to legally promulgate the 2010-11 and 2011-12 financial years’ budgets, making it possible for ratepayers to claim back all rates and taxes for those two book years via their representative Ratepayers association, in this case GUTs. We are appealing to all residents who lived and paid charges in Greyton in those financial years to contact us. The money that we can legally claim back from the Municipality can empower us to fund our future actions and interventions.
Furthermore, substantive prior extensive legal casework has been analysed involving other Municipalities that have contested service provision, which in many cases has been woeful. There have been several important Court cases that have been contested and won by dissident taxpayers, even involving the Constitutional court. It has taken a substantial amount of time to get to the point where the GUTs team are confident that they, in conjunction with our advisory lawyer, have the relevant information to proceed with legal actions against TWKM and its ability to provide a proper level of services to Greyton Taxpayers. However, good progress has been made and our legal team is almost ready with a whole body of legal documents to be used for several legal actions in the future. We aim to finalise this by the end of September.
GUTs have always advised its members that it is critical to follow the safe and sound legal route to have any real chance of success without potential legal costs being incurred. There are three primary targets for legal action at present:
- Sewerage truck services.
- Water treatment, water service delivery (involving testing of municipal water in Greyton).
- Adequacy of road surfaces and road safety in Greyton, and road drainage and stormwater systems.
Our first action was taken three weeks ago when the GUTs committee gave the local TWKM officials legal notice that sewerage services are very poor compared to reasonable municipal standards. They reacted positively, since additional trucks were dispatched to address the backlog and the new Mayor let it be known that she expected improvement of the services to Greyton.
Unfortunately, the issue has recently been complicated by TWKM’s management advising that the oversight and management of sewerage services is being moved to Caledon w.e.f. 1 October 2023. This means that GUTS will likely have to restart their legal processes directly with Caledon should the service standards not improve. The GUTs committee is going to need to collate accurate statistics from residents about the sewerage service in Greyton, particularly with regard to flagrant instances of overflowing sewage tanks contravening the RSA Health and Safety act.
A few comments on membership:
- GUTs now has 85 members. It is mission critical that we have the greatest possible representation in Ward 2, so we appeal to everyone to please spread the word.
- Just to confirm the annual membership fees, there is a once-off application fee of R200 and monthly membership is R50. We would prefer people to pay the R600 up front to simplify administration, but alternatively you could arrange a stop order with your bank to pay monthly.
- We have also decided to offer a 50% discount to people who cannot afford the fees. This will be on application and at our discretion.
- The committee has decided that the financial year only commences on 1 October, so members who have already paid have not “lost out” while we were getting our ducks in a row.
Thanks so much for your support and understanding. We commit to keep people informed on a regular basis in future.
