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MATSAPHA RATES CONFUSION

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MATSAPHA – Did Matsapha Town Council ever invoice different ratepayers with rates bills for a single plot?


This is one of the questions which the ongoing commission of Inquiry into the affairs of Matsapha Town Council seeks answers to.
 The commissioners asked Matsapha Town Council acting Town Treasurer Nokulunga Magagula how  council allegedly issued two invoices to different stakeholders for the same plot. The commissioners said some ratepayers submitted that they discovered that council was allegedly invoicing government with rate bills for the same property they (private owners) were invoiced for.

 


Treasurer


In response, the acting town treasurer claimed that she had never seen such happening. She claimed that they were using an evaluation roll to collect rates and they had never found in the roll that there was a plot whose rates were paid by two different ratepayers.
“We want to know how council was receiving payments from two different ratepayers for a same plot,” the commissioners said, directing enquiry to the acting town treasurer.


Again, the acting town treasurer claimed that there was no way council could send two bills for one plot. She alleged that the system they were using could easily pick it up.


However, the commissioners wanted to know what council would do if it could find itself in such an error and the acting town treasurer said they would refund the ratepayer who would have been invoiced by mistake.


Again, the commission asked how council found itself having to refund a ratepayer. The acting town treasurer claimed that such had never happened.
“If a ratepayer is wrongly invoiced, he/she usually calls to clarify that he/she no longer owns the property in question,” she stated.


Witnesses


However, she mentioned that they do refund ratepayers who had mistakenly paid their bills twice. It is worth mentioning that one of the witnesses, an Arab businessman, who was representing his fellow countrymen, appeared before the commission and alleged that he learnt with shock that government was also invoiced for a property he was paying rates for.

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