Rates Insensitivity

THE latest supplementary rates valuation roll published recently by the Msunduzi Municipality is a shocking piece of administrative work. Contractors were paid vast sums of money to produce this millennium masterpiece. Values of properties have changed drastically from previous valuation rolls, without even a single household visit by these incompetent evaluators.

Values of some homes and industries have varied from millions of rands to well below their market values, and have increased again to way above those in the initial valuations. I beg an answer from the valuation company to explain these large anomalies and request the methodology they used to establish the values of homes, especially in the northern areas.

The municipality, city mayor and her band of merry men must be held accountable by the ratepayers for not having scrutinised the process of valuation before establishing the rates income in the city budget in the region of R430 million. They are hellbent on destroying this city and plunging it into the depths of despair, with potentially crippling closures of industries. Many are contemplating relocation in order to reduce costs.

Very soon the recession will bite deeper and those who become unemployed will have to sell their homes. This will impact severely on poverty in our city. There has already been an exodus of large companies and it is a fact that other municipalities are far more sensitive to their ratepayers and are intent on ensuring a safe passage during the recession facing us.

It is time that the provincial premier intervened or set up an inquiry into the rates fiasco and the financial state of affairs of the capital which is slowly being poisoned by its management.

AHMED A. KHAN
Belfort, Pietermaritzburg