New Germany company slapped with extreme water bill
The company in New Germany wants answers on how their bill jumped from R 17 000 to over a million in just a few months.
THE biggest community newspaper printing company in Durban, Highway Printers is calling on the eThekwini Municipality to explain the exorbitant water bill they have received.
The water bill of the New Germany-based company jumped drastically from R17 000 to an average of R 84 000 a month. An irate works manager at Highway Printers, Marvin Gillingwater said the city recently sent a bill of R 1 449 488.77 for a nine-month period.
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Gillingwater said they have reported this matter numerous times to try to get the municipality to take action but nothing has been done.
The Highway Mail has the company’s Metro Water invoices from 2023, which all ranged around R17 000 per month.
“We were shocked to get a bill in May this year with an amount of more than a million rand, how is that possible? We need an explanation. I have requested an engineer from the water department to visit our property, but to date, nothing has come of the request.”
He said what he finds strange is that the company does not have a water meter. He has been asking the municipality how they were reading the meter prior to this drastic bill?
According to Gillingwater, he suspects that the water leak from another company is the cause of the high bill.
“The leak is coming onto our property and is causing extensive damage. Besides the damage, this is clean drinking water and thousands of litres of this water is going to waste. This has been going on for months on end. I have called, emailed and begged the eThekwini Municipality to sort this out and I don’t know what to do anymore. Who will pay for this damage. We cannot go on like this.
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“Is it impossible for a bill to jump from R17 000 to over a million in a few months. We would really appreciate it if the municipality can resolve this and inform us which meter they are taking the readings from,” he said.
The Highway Mail tried to get comment from the City but received no feedback at the time of publishing.
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