Sapoa concerned about funding Cape Town water projects

15th January 2018

By: Anine Kilian

Contributing Editor Online

     

Font size: - +

The South African Property Owners Association (Sapoa) is concerned that the City of Cape Town is not receiving the necessary income needed to fund projects for emergency water supply augmentation projects that were launched in mid-2017.

The city proposed to raise the funding through the imposition of a drought charge.

“While the proposed charge will affect residential and commercial properties alike, the lower threshold of R50 000 for commercial properties means that the charge will have a broad impact on the industry,” Sapoa said in a statement on Monday.

The association added that the proposed drought charge was an additional tax and queried how the city foresaw charging such a tax when taxes were only imposed at national level.
 
“Sapoa understands and accepts that the supply augmentation projects will cost money and we feel strongly that recovering the drought charge uniformly, according to a property rates valuation, gives no recognition to those consumers who have heeded the call to save water,” it said.

The association further stated that the calculation of the drought charge was in no way linked to water consumption in a building.

“Any charge, if imposed, should be funded by a charge against water consumption and not against the building value.”
 
Sapoa pointed out that the schedule it received from the City of Cape Town stops at R500-million for commercial properties and queried the consideration where the property values were above this figure.

“For buildings approaching R1-billion [in] value, the amount of the drought charge would be exorbitant. Sapoa impresses on the city to keep it informed of the next steps and the progress that is being made with regards to the proposal.”

Edited by Samantha Herbst
Creamer Media Deputy Editor

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION