Resident Cindy Sigalow has taken it upon herself to reconcile her incorrect statements from Joburg Water, yet she is still in arrears according to the department.
Sigalow received what was clearly an incorrect statement from the department in July 2013 and immediately logged a dispute with regard to incorrect reconciliation with the City’s call centre. According to the statement, she owed the department a total of R16 300 in usage fees. This was a far take from her normal expense to the department, which amounted to around R1 250 in June 2013.
Her complaint was later escalated to Shaun Govender, the assistant director of Revenue Back Office Support, who redirected the complaint to a certain Heinrich du Plooy on 5 December. Although Du Plooy initially offered his interpretation of the problem and the opportunity to meet and discuss the issue, Sigalow hasn’t heard from him since 11 December, despite various emails to his work email account.
“In my correspondence with the relevant persons, I have actually done the reconciliation on their behalf.
“Even with all of that free labour, they cannot seem to manage sending me a corrected statement.”
After all the effort and discussions her account still reflect an incorrect R6 000 arrears.
Shaun Govender declined to comment and redirected the Record to the media department via a landline number. The media department was also unavailable for commentary.
Du Plooy had promised to take care of the issue on Monday 6 December.
“I will reverse and rebuild the account for you, we can then confirm the rebalance once adjusted.
“This should be done by the end of the week.”
