- The City of Joburg municipality is set to implement approved tariff increases starting 1st July 2024.
- This will see electricity costs rise by 12.7 percent despite several parts of the municipality being without power this month.
- Other municipalities across the country have announced similar increases, as the cost of living rises once again.
If you own a property or sectional title in the City of Joburg municipality, you likely received a notification from your property manager in recent days alerting you as to an upcoming increase in tariffs next week.
If not, earlier this month both the City of Joburg and City of Tshwane announced that tariff increases would take effect from 1st July 2024. Consequently, residents of both municipalities will need to contend with higher prices in order to access basic services.
To that end, the increased tariffs for Johannesburg will see property rates rise by 3.8 percent for the 2024/2025 financial year. Added to this will be a significant increase in electricity by 12.7 percent, while refuse collection will go up by 5.9 percent, as well as water and sanitation both rising by 7.7 percent.
The increases to electricity and water will prove a particularly bitter pill for Joburg residents to swallow, as the month of June has seen exhaustive outages owing to poorly handled load reduction measures by City Power. Exacerbating matters is an anticipated 37-day water outage across the region as the result of repair work being conducted by Rand Water.
In a bid to paint a less grim picture, the City of Joburg has also shared the increase of tariffs in other municipalities set to take effect. To that end, the table below shows that most of the increases for each service are in line with other municipalities like the City of Cape Town, City of Tshwane, and Ekurhuleni.
The worst impacted by tariffs rising, however, is eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal, which sees double-digit increases for electricity, water, and sanitation.
| Municipality Property | Rates | Electricity | Water | Sanitation | Refuse |
| City of Joburg | 4.8 percent | 10.7 percent | 7.7 percent | 7.7 percent | 5.9 percent |
| eThekwini | 7.9 percent | 14 percent | 14.9 percent | 12.9 percent | 8 percent |
| City of Cape Town | 5.7 percent | 11.8 percent | 6.8 percent | 6.8 percent | 5.7 percent |
| Nelson Mandela | 5 percent | 15.7 percent | 6 percent | 6 percent | 6 percent |
| Ekurhuleni | 4.9 percent | 11-12.74 percent | 9 percent | 7 percent | 6 percent |
| City of Tshwane | 5 percent | 12 percent | 5.9 percent | 5.9 percent | 5 percent |
The City of Joburg has also attempted to highlight that it remains the most affordable municipality to live in, although for many residents grappling with a higher cost of living in 2024, it likely does not feel that way.
[Image – Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash‘
