BUREAUCRATIC GRIDLOCK: R44m Gauteng, Joburg billing dispute threatens 22 child-care NGOs

Three Gauteng departments and the City of Johannesburg are locked in a billing dispute that could paralyse 22 NGOs that care for children.

The Children’s Memorial Institute (CMI) campus is once again under threat of disconnection of services because of infighting between three provincial departments and the City of Johannesburg.

If this happens, it halts operations for 22 child-care NGOs, paralyses the Johannesburg School for Autism and threatens the central provincial laundry that supplies clean linen to Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital and 13 regional public clinics.

For the second time in less than five months – and despite binding high court interdicts – the City of Johannesburg has issued fresh pre-termination notices for water and electricity accounts. The municipal bill reflects disputed arrears in excess of R44-million (more than R41-million for electricity and R3-million for water), dating back years.

Yet, ground-level enforcement by City Power and Johannesburg Water treats the entire Parktown complex as a single defaulting debtor, bundling 22 vulnerable charities together with high-consumption provincial infrastructure.

The dispute has reached an administrative stalemate involving four separate organs of state: the City of Johannesburg, Gauteng Health, Gauteng Education and the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID).

This is how the situation has developed over a decade of interdepartmental dysfunction across a shared, heritage precinct:

The shared campus setup: The CMI heritage site in Parktown houses two entirely different operations under a single municipal bulk meter feed: 22 statutory child-welfare NGOs (including Childline, the Teddy Bear Foundation and the Johannesburg School for Autism) alongside a massive, industrial provincial laundry facility operated by the Gauteng Department of Health.

Disproportionate utility usage: Engineering readings reveal that the provincial laundry facility consumes more than 90% of the water and electricity across the entire CMI campus – using roughly 300 kilolitres of water a day compared with just 12 kilolitres for all 22 charities combined.

The 2013 master account agreement: Under a 2013 inter-departmental memorandum of understanding, the Gauteng Department of Health agreed to manage the master utility account for the entire property. However, as municipal bills mounted, the department began disputing the billing quantum, alleging severe overestimation by the City, and stopped settling the account – without establishing individual meters or creating a mechanism to bill tenants fairly.

What happened in the first cut-off: In late 2025, City Power executed a blanket electricity disconnection following unresolved water interdicts from July 2025.