The new valuation roll for 2014 to 2018 has been published and the valuation of a property will have an effect on the new property rates to be paid.

The new roll can be inspected until 31 March and objections should be submitted before the same date.

After an extensive struggle at the municipality to obtain information that is in the public domain and should be easily accessible, the following methods can be mentioned to inspect the valuation roll.

* Go to offices C041 and C034 at the Makhado Municipality. In the media notice it is published that the valuation roll can be inspected from 08:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 16:00. It is, however, probably not advisable to come during the last hour since some residents have found that they were not allowed in.

* Contact the Soutpansberg Ratepayers Association's manager, Mr Phillip Olivier, who only managed to get hold of a copy of the roll on 25 February.

* Use the Internet. The valuation roll for farms is easily accessible. For the town and surrounds, the valuation roll is 4 786 pages long and not compatible with all browsers. One estate agent said that her computer took a couple of hours to download the file and then it did not want to display. This method worked on Monday this week. Go to www.makhado.gov.za and, on the left-hand side, you should be able to see about 20 modules. Switch to another browser if necessary. The roll of the farms is on the right-hand side, third from the top. For the town, go to the left side, and hover over the fifth module from the top, named Documents and Publications. Click on Valuation roll and then on the PDF file General Valuation Roll for the Period 2014 to 2018. Use a PDF file reader such as Adobe Reader to download and save. Use the Find function under Edit. Type in a key word or number such as your street address, at the top right and press the arrows.

On Tuesday, however, the valuation roll for the town was gone from the website and the roll for the farms, containing 72 pages, appeared in two places.  Hopefully, the municipality was responding to pleas to divide the town roll into different sections to make it more accessible and, hopefully, it will be reloaded soon.

Media enquiries about the accessibility of the valuation roll on the website and the fact that most properties were valued for above R1 million were put to the Makhado Municipality. Another matter queried was that officials were not prepared to give out the valuation roll in electronic form unless sanctioned by the director. The discrepancy between the fact that the valuation roll is a public record and the refusal to give the document electronically to the media was raised in the enquiries. The municipal manager, Mr Sakkie Mutshinyali, responded promptly by saying that the matter had been referred. The municipal spokesperson, Mr Louis Bobodi, is still to respond. 

Mr Olivier from the SRPA can be contacted on 082 679 8324.