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Has your DEWA bill gone up?


The results are in.


Nov 22nd, 2009

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Residents in Dubai have been complaining that their water and electricity bills for the month of September have doubled, although authorities at the Dubai Water and Electricity Authority (DEWA) have denied increasing tariffs.

The majority of our respondents - 65 percent - have said that their DEWA bill has risen by more than 50 percent. Another 25 percent said that their bill went up marginally. Only 5 percent of our respondents said that they bills didn’t increase.

Many angry residents complained to DEWA and ranted to the media about the problem. They also created a group on social networking site Facebook called “My DEWA bill increased in September 09 by a crazy amount for no reason!” The group currently boasts 208 members, and some of them have been urging others to boycott the bill in order to force DEWA to do something about it.

But DEWA said in a statement earlier this month that there was no increase in tariff charges for electricity and water, and that the confusion was probably caused because of a change in the billing system.  The new format calculates the tariffs between specific dates and not by the entire month, the authority said.

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4 Responses »

  1. S on November 23rd, 2009 at 8:36 am:

    It’s true! i was shocked to see my bill amount of AED 278!! My bills usually range anywhere between AED 50 - AED 80 average every month. DEWA need to get their act toogether.

  2. Andrew on November 23rd, 2009 at 9:12 am:

    Fluctuations because the bill is calculated straddling August and October as well still won’t account for increases ranging from 50% to 500%

    Get your act together DEWA and admit you botched the communication, implementation and execution of your new billing system. Stop being clowns and making excuses. if you want trust, people want truth.

  3. George on November 23rd, 2009 at 9:30 pm:

    I am shocked to see my bill for Oct 09. First I noticed that the bill is in a new format comparing to the Sept bill. Then I noticed my bill amount is almost double and I could not believe it. I used to monitor my electricity consumption daily and log it in a piece of paper for the last one year. And this helps me to get an idea about how much electricity I am consuming each month and how much it will cost me for each month. But when I see the bill there is no comparison between my actual readings and bill’s actual reading for the month. I request Dewa guys must be more transparent, sensible, cooperative and more public friendly in the billing system.

  4. Plum Endemon on November 24th, 2009 at 12:17 pm:

    What about Palm District Cooling? Less than 20% of my last bill was consumption charge, ie what I actually used. The rest was the monthly service charge (30 AED) and capacity charge. No idea what the latter is but it makes up about 75% of the total bill. Even if I don’t use my air conditioning at all, I still have to pay around 240 AED per month in capacity charge - each and every month !! It’s outrageous.

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