Dubai: A number of Discovery Gardens buildings are still without water supplies, after having been disconnected on Friday. This was despite the fact that tenants had paid their bills.
Residents say they were promised temporary water supplies, delivered by tankers provided by developers Nakheel, although none have so far been provided.
Rakesh Perumpilly complained to the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) that the water had been disconnected in his building, number 94 in the Mediterranean cluster.
"I spoke to Dewa and they said the water was disconnected due to non-payment… We have paid, but Nakheel has not paid the general utilities payment. Despite paying on time, residents are the ones suffering," he told Gulf News.
Perumpilly claims that 25 buildings in the cluster are currently affected.
When contacted by Gulf News, a Nakheel spokesperson stated: "We are currently consolidating all the accounts on the buildings that we manage, with the authority [Dewa] to verify the owners of all the accounts. During this process, we have individual cases of disruption of water or power on Discovery Gardens and we are taking the necessary measures to maintain the utilities to the buildings."
However, the spokesperson did not answer questions about any temporary water supplies or when the problem was likely to be solved.
Abdullah Al Hajiri, Dewa's executive vice-president of Customer Service, told Gulf News yesterday that Dewa reserved the right to disconnect customers who did not pay their accounts.
"We have more than 610,000 customers and each bill should be paid within 14 days. If it's not paid in time we will send a reminder and an SMS and if the customer does not pay in the following 14 days then we do our best to call. If by the end we cannot contact the customer by any means, Dewa reserves the right to disconnect, unfortunately," he said.
