Dear PARRA members
It has been an interesting start to the year, some good, some not so good, but we continue to enjoy Lovley summer weather, and our farmers, gardens and tanks have been blessed with some heavy rain, some of it accompanied by terrifically noisy thunderstorms, rather unusual for our part of the world.
PARRA held its AGM last week attended by about 30 residents. Several presentations were made by members of the PARRA executive as well as one from John Coster, a member of PARRA. For those who couldn’t attend the AGM I precis below the presentations.
Ren Mouton (PARRA Chair Person). Ren thanked her committee for all their hard work over the past year. She reported that PARRA has continue to engage regularly with the municipality to raise concerns and demand accountability and transparency. The major focus over the past year has been the oversight of budgets, tariffs and excessive and unwarranted expenses. Whilst PARRA had a total of 175 paid up members in 2025, this did include complexes such as Settlers Park being counted as one member, but which represented several hundred residents. Ren agreed there were many challenges ahead and we will continue to get to challenge the Municipality and hope that one day they will take what we say to heart – we can but hope. Ren then asked John and committee members to introduce themselves and make small presentations around their portfolios.
John Coster (PARRA member). John has taken great interest in the electricity tariff situation in which we find ourselves. He has met with Mr Hendrick Barnard several times, (Mr Barnard prepared the Cost of Sales study on which all the electricity charges and tariffs have been based) and has some very strong disagreements with how the study was done, the figures on which it was based (taken during load shedding and based on high usage when loadshedding ended each day) and assumptions which came from the study. He painted a very bleak picture of the future of Eskom which he described as being in a “doom loop”, debt is drowning Eskom and as a result we, the users are having to pay exorbitant prices to keep it afloat.
Stuart Furstenberg of CDR explained the capacity charges and the registration requirement of SSEG users which has been called for the Municipality. Stuart recommends solar users register their units with the Municipality, mainly because once SSEG users have had their new meters installed, they will be able to mitigate their electricity accounts by selling unwanted electricity back to the supplier. Approximately 200 of these new meters had been installed to date. Stuart reiterated to the audience that the only way to mitigate high-capacity charges is to downsize your amp capacity. He recommended every ratepayer looks closely at their electricity consumption and make the decision to reduce usage as soon as possible
Dawie van Wyk (PARRA Vice Chairperson) Dawie wears many hats on the PARRA. He oversees the budget, the IDP (integrated Development Plan), Finance, Infrastructure and is also on the Board of the NRF (Ndlambe Rates Forum). Dawie disagreed with Stuart’s recommendation that SSEG users register their units with the Municipality. He pointed out that although the electricity distribution industry is highly regulated, SSEGs have not been adequately covered in national policy or legislation. He together with other committee members has had several meetings with NERSA on the topic of SSEGs and has just received an email from them saying: “Please note that the rules for SSEG were never issued, the legislation to enact them was not passed”.
Dawie also spoke about an undated, unapproved and unsigned SSEG Regulations Ndlambe Policy Document also compiled by Mr Barnard, which includes threats of disconnection if consumers connect to new SSEG systems that they claim do not comply with safety requirements. But this document has not been approved by Council. Dawie reiterated that the SSEG charges are ridiculously high, discriminating against solar users who are paying considerably higher fixed charges than non-solar users.
As a board member of the NRF he reported that the NRF’s biggest complaint is the Infrastructure Department which requires some serious investigation.
Bill Rowlston (Committee Member responsible for Infrastructure and Planning). Bill related some of the challenges he faces when trying to obtain dam levels and water quality test results for both tap water and the rivers. Ndlambe will not release the information to the public through their website, which they are mandated to do, and one of the reasons given by one of the deputy directors was: “if it turns out that the rivers have been polluted people might decide not to come and invest in the town”! Bill also suggested to the Director of Infrastructure that possibly it would be a good idea to inspect the water and sewerage pump stations monthly, and she replied “we prefer to react to incidents”.
Bill also tries to work with the town planning department but at every corner he is stopped by the powers that be invoking the POPIA Act! Apparently, the Planning Tribunal doesn’t meet very often and when it does, it is in secret and PARRA cannot, therefore, be party to the rationale in accepting or rejecting applications.
Claire Wright (Manager of the Royal Alfred Marina). Claire explained how the Marina is involved with many infrastructure repairs within the Municipality. They had arranged the transportation of rocks to the pier and repaired area that were crumbling into the sea. The Marina is currently dredging the area around Kiddies Beach to assist with the water supply to the Duck Pong, it has replaced all the lights along the pier and surrounds and continues to be involved with many other projects that go on quietly behind the scenes to beautify Port Alfred such as holding regular beach and river cleanups. Claire is also on the Kowie River Estuary committee which arranged for the Small Boat Harbour to be cleaned up after the heavy rains caused a load of debris from Park Road to be washed in the harbour.
Ann Edwards: (Committee Member responsible for Infrastructure upgrade of the sewerage works and the Park Road Rebuild). Ann regaled a litany of disasters that so many residents have experienced on both the East and West Bank. She described the contractors as clueless, a negligent and absent consulting engineer, Ndlambe Directorate as incompetent, in other words the whole project was a disaster waiting to happen. The current contractor was given a R25 million contract but he his own issues with outstanding payment for equipment, not paying staff, clawback of equipment for lack of payment, broken vehicles etc. She is working tirelessly to see this disaster come to an end, despite having had her tyres slashed and been verbally abused on many occasions. She has also been involved with the Park Road project and as the pavers have finally been delivered, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel for all the residents that have been so badly affected over recent months.
Mandy Roesstorff (Committee Member Treasurer). Mandy presented the PARRA financial report: PARRA received around R150,000 in donations towards the legal costs of the name change dispute which has been paid over to the lawyers. Ren (Chairperson) asked the members present if they agreed to PARRA making a donation of R50,000 from its own reserved towards the legal costs, this was agreed.
After a few questions from the audience, the meeting was closed