{"id":965225,"date":"2024-07-11T05:39:16","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T05:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/dm-simulator-v2\/?p=965225"},"modified":"2024-07-11T05:39:16","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T05:39:16","slug":"wentworth-residents-complain-about-exorbitant-electricity-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wentworth-residents-complain-about-exorbitant-electricity-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"Wentworth residents complain about exorbitant electricity bills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Residents of Wentworth, in the south of Durban, have raised concerns about the electricity<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sabcnews.com\/sabcnews\/pre-paid-electricity-users-urged-to-upgrade-their-meter-software\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> billing system<\/a> in their area, citing exorbitant bills.<\/p>\n<p>Many households in Wentworth live in poverty and residents struggling to pay for electricity say their high bills are a violation of their rights.<\/p>\n<p>The eThekwini Metro has acknowledged the challenges raised by Wentworth residents<\/p>\n<p>One resident shared her experience, saying, &#8220;I kept on going to them and they kept on telling me that, no, I have to pay this, before they make me pay so much every month, and I told them I am not working, I don&#8217;t have that amount of money, which was R30 000. I said I can&#8217;t even pay R500 so where will I get R30 000. That is what led me to go to the electricity department to ask them to please help me with installing a prepaid which they told me that if I buy tokens, there&#8217;s a percentage that they will take off to help me with my arrears. So, I agreed with that, but now I am still waiting, it&#8217;s been 2 years and they have not come.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Another resident expressed similar frustrations, &#8220;I am waiting from last year till now, my lights are R27 000. I get a disability grant, there are people in our community who get disability grants and pensions. How do they pay, if they say pay R2 000 a month, how do you buy food? How do you live like this? No, it&#8217;s wrong, I feel it&#8217;s not right what they are doing to us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Residents of Wentworth concerned about the electricity billing system in their area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":965226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[267,1067,1068],"class_list":["post-965225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-south-africa","tag-durban","tag-electricity-billings","tag-wentworth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}