Illegal water cut-offs rocks Lombardy West’s property owner

A resident of Lombardy West is crying foul claiming that the City of Johannesburg is forever threatening to cut-off her municipal water supply even though she doesn’t owe them.

Busisiwe Kekana has approached North Eastern Tribune for assistance saying her efforts to get the City to rectify their mistake have felt on deaf ears.

Kekana accuses the City and its entity, Joburg Water (JW), of constantly cutting off her supply illegally even though she does not owe them.

She said the technicians from JW constantly visit her home in Oak Crescent Street and cut-off her water supply despite their water bill account being up to date.

The technicians confuse my address with that of my neighbour and whenever they come they would just cut-off without properly verifying the meters, she said.

“They would just cut without even checking if the metre number corresponded with the account number to be disconnected,” she said.

“The amounts showing for my neighbour would be R40 000 but they would come to our house to cut off illegally and the reason we were given by the technicians is that their navigation system brought them to our house,” explained Kekana.

Kekana said in December 2017 their water bill shot up from R1800 to R3000 from the previous month, due to a meter that was leaking and was not even detected by the metre readers.

“It shows the metre readers just estimated as they would have detected there was something wrong.

“We continued paying what we could afford as previously charged, until in May when we went to the City to query the high bill and we were advised to check if the meter was not leaking and only to find it was indeed leaking,” said Kekana.

We received a pre-termination notice before 15 August showing a balance of R2 612 and yet only July was not paid, and the fault was due to the leaking meter that was not detected by their metre readers.

“So, it tells you that they were not reading the meters but estimating, if they did actually read, they would have observed the leakage,” she said.

Ward 81 councillor, Irene Rugheimer, has requested the owner to supply her with all evidence of their issue and promised to have an inspector to visit the property to check their meter.

“We have experienced problems with meter readers reading the meter for power incorrectly – in this case, if the resident takes a picture of the meter with a current date, the City will send out someone to check this as well – if it reads different to the bill,” she said.

Details: Busisiwe Kekana 0829627634.

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