City of Joburg Ombudsman and City of Joburg

We have been in dispute with the City of Johannesburg and the Ombudsman for 3 years, regarding a water bill for one month of R243 193.24 We have over 180 email correspondence, numerous calls and reference numbers to COJ, have had an attorney involved, have received an independent report and have most recently had 3 Zoom meetings with the Ombudsman. We have had our electricity disconnected on numerous occasions, been harassed by COJ, who have caused damage to our property on more than one occasion, have had security try and remove them for trespassing and we are no closer to a resolution as we were 3 years ago. The conduct of both the Ombudsman and COJ over the last 3 years and the sudden about turn of Advocate Livhuwani from the Ombudsman has proved that they have no interest in looking rationally at this matter, at assisting their customers, acting in the best interest of the law abiding public.

Which brings us to the present state of affairs and the last Zoom meeting held on the Friday 08 April 2022. This final meeting was a complete disaster and a waste of time based on the following:

1. Advocate Livhuwani completely changed his previous stance at this meeting. On December 6th, 2021, he was reasonable and clear, and wanted to know from the City of Joburg how it is POSSIBLE for 2 people to use R240K worth of water in one month. However, at the most recent meeting, he made it clear that he doesn’t deal in what is possible and what is not possible. A complete contradiction.

2. He was interrupting and talking over us, raising his voice disrespectfully, and told us in no uncertain terms that our argument was irrelevant and we should not be bringing up the fact that COJ has the INCORRECT electricity meter number on our account. When we tried to point this out, purely as an example of the blatant errors COJ refuses to accept that they make, we were told to stop talking about electricity. Yet, in the same breath the Advocate made it clear that our electricity was cut off as a result of our water account being in arrears (apparently the COJ can simply “choose” which account to cut off at their own discretion!). So how does that make our discussion irrelevant??

3. The manner in which he chaired this meeting was so disgusting and disrespectful and clearly biased towards COJ, that our Ward Councillor Nicolene Jonker called us afterwards to apologise for the way he spoke to us!

4. The end result of the meeting was EXACTLY the same as the end of the last meeting more than 4 months ago on 06 December 2021, where nothing has happened in 4 months.

5. Subsequent to the last meeting, we have twice requested the recordings of the meetings and to date, not surprisingly, none have been supp****.

We are left at the end of our rope on this matter after 3 years of harassment, not to mention the hundreds of hours we have spent on this matter, legal fees and costs to repair property damaged by COJ.

My suggestion would be to bypass the Ombudsman and COJ and go straight to Social Media or an Attorney.