A 70-year-old La Lucia resident is under duress after receiving a utility bill of R554 448 from the eThekwini Municipality in January 2025.

The resident, who did not want to be named, had her water supply disconnected last Friday, causing her more misery. The resident had filed a dispute with the city in July 2024 regarding her bill but received no disclosure.

On Friday (today), when she contacted the municipality, she was told they would reconnect her water supply in 48 hours.

“My consolidated billing account is extremely exorbitant. Under no circumstances did I make use of this amount of water. There are only two of us staying on the property. My husband died recently. I enclosed letters in support of my dispute and requested to put the account on hold. The bill states that the water meter is unread. I emailed my meter readings on the fifth of each month,” she said.

The resident is living off 5 litre bottles of water that she purchases from a supermarket. She said that in September 2023, there was a pipe leak at the water meter outside her yard and that could have been the cause of the excessive bill.

Compounding her troubles, the water credit control department claimed she tampered with the water meter assembly.

eThekwini Ward 35 councillor Bradley Singh said the city issued a disconnection notice but it was not carried out. Thus, they claimed that she tampered with the meter.

“Where is the proof that the customer tampered with the meter? This is not an appropriate way to treat our senior citizens. They should have sat down with the customer and found a solution. It shows the lack of care for senior citizens. They should have installed a flow meter in the interim,” Singh said.

The municipality did not respond at the time of going to publication.

In January 2025, the POST newspaper reported a similar problem faced by oThongathi resident Arumoogum Pillay.

Pillay, represented by Krisendra Bisetty of Bisetty Attorneys, took the municipality to court. Pillay argued that he was not liable for the water charges because he could not have consumed so much water, and there were no water leaks on his property.

The Durban Regional Court ordered the eThekwini Municipality to remove surplus water charges totalling approximately R322 900 against Pillay’s municipal account. The court also ordered the municipality to remove a water restrictor installed on his oThongathi property and withdraw any negative report concerning him to any credit bureau.

eThekwini PR councillor and leader of Democratic Liberal Congress, Patrick Pillay, dealt with a similar issue where a Phoenix resident, Recce Naraidu, had a R3.3 million amount scrapped in January. Pillay said after going through Naraidu’s bill, he picked up an anomaly with the capture of an incorrect electricity meter reading.

Pillay encouraged residents to check their bills thoroughly.

“There are many instances where we dealt with incorrect meter readings. Residents are blatantly told that they must pay the bill. It is a violation of the Batho Pele principles,” Pillay said.

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) eThekwini councillor Dr Jonathan Annipen said there were rumours that the municipality was procuring a new revenue billing system in the next two years.

Annipen advised residents to submit their meter readings via the relevant city emails timeously.

“Residents should also check if the account number is correct. On most occasions we dealt with, digits were captured incorrectly. Keep checking your consumption and if there are water leaks,” he said.

zainul.dawood@inl.co.za