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Water Supplies handles complaints fairly
In response to a recent newspaper editorial remarking that it was unfair for the public utilities to require the consumers to settle their bills first when lodging complaints about electricity, water or gas bills and that the Water Supplies Department (WSD) would disconnect the water supply of complainants if they did not settle the water bills first, a department spokesman said today (Friday):
"Under the Waterworks Ordinance, registered consumers are responsible for the maintenance of their inside services and pay for the water consumption recorded by their water meters.
"If the water bills are, in their opinion, unreasonable, they may enquire or raise queries at any of the WSD's Consumer Enquiry Centres in person, in writing or by telephone.
"On receiving customer complaints, the water bills will be frozen. Under certain circumstances, the department will request the consumers to pay an "interim charge" which is equivalent to their normal amount of water charges while the remaining amount will be frozen temporarily until investigations are completed.
"During investigation, no action will be taken to disconnect the water supply of the complainants.
"Enquiries on water bills should be made, as far as possible, seven days before the deadline of payment, otherwise if results of investigation showed that the customers are required to pay the charges, they might have to pay an extra five per cent of the overdue surcharges.
"This measure is designed to avoid the abuse of complaint procedures by individual customer to delay the payment of water charge.
"There are many reasons for high water charges. The most common ones are leakage of water, illegal connection which leads to high water consumption and negligence such as failing to turn faucet tight and misrecording of meter readings. Malfunction of meters will also cause improper readings.
"On receiving customers' complaints, staff members will be sent to record the meter readings again. If the readings are found to be correct, consumer services inspectors will be deployed to the premises concerned to investigate the inside services and meters so as to find out the cause of high water consumption. If the meters are suspected to be damaged, new meters will be replaced.
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