Joburg's mayoral committee member for finance Funzela Ngobeni, left, and Maraisburg property owner Keenen Whittaker inspect the new electricity meter after he received a bill of R48 000 for municipal services. Picture: Anna Cox Joburg's mayoral committee member for finance Funzela Ngobeni, left, and Maraisburg property owner Keenen Whittaker inspect the new electricity meter after he received a bill of R48 000 for municipal services. Picture: Anna Cox
Johannesburg - The City of Joburg is making amends with a prepaid customer who was erroneously billed about R19 000 for services.
The dispute over the unpaid bill lasted for about a year, prompting Keenen Whittaker from Florida to seek relief through the media.
“The mayor himself promised all Joburg residents that he will ensure that these billing issues will be something of the past and he committed to sort it out.
He even made a bold statement that he will ‘resign’ if he cannot sort it out,” Whitaker wrote to the city council.
“We as the Whittaker family are very disappointed and aggrieved by the treatment we received from city officials, management and the mayor,” read part of the email dated November 9.
Meanwhile, city spokesperson Kgamanyane Maphologela said the city had conducted a site inspection to verify the matters addressed by the customer and would provide a detailed investigation report once all stakeholders including sister companies had been consulted.
“The city has flagged the account ensuring that the customer is excluded from the credit management action, while we finalise and correct the account. The customer will be advised about the final status of their query upon completion of the internal investigations,” said Kgamanyane.
“All pre-termination charges, interest and cut-off charges raised on the account that are subject to the incorrect billing have been reversed. The account was indeed erroneously charged as reflected historically on the customer’s invoice. However this has since been rectified.
The electricity pre-paid meter was installed previously but was not timely loaded on the billing system to reflect on the customer’s invoice. The conventional electricity meters details have been removed from the customer’s account and replaced with the prepaid meter.”
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