Quality Filtration Systems (QFS) has announced plans to drag the City to court over outstanding payments totaling R20 million. QFS is one of the desalination service providers running a desalination plant at VA waterfront.
According to the company’s Managing Director, Herman Smit, the City of Cape Town is in breach of a contract which is worth R53 million.
We are suing the City of Cape Town since they are in breach of contract and have not made payments required within the contract. The original contract was valued at R53m, only R1.7m has been paid so far and we are owed over R20m to date.
QFS has said it initially had to approach the Hight Court to force the city to a mediation process. The mediation process ran for 5 days with no resolution and now QFS has decided to sue the city as a means of settling the dispute.
QFS was contracted in January last year to provide one of three desalination plants to provide fresh drinking water using a reverse osmosis sea water desalination plant. These plants were developed in the city’s bid to beat Day Zero.
However, it is understood that desalination is no longer considered as a viable solution to the Cape Town’s water crisis.
QFS also claims that it has already provided 181000kl of water to the city as per specification. The company claims that the city has already sold this water to consumers and the company is not happy that the city is now claiming that the water was not to spec.
According to Musa Ndlovu, engineer and director at QFS,
The city has sold this water on at an augmented price but has to date only paid QFS R1.7m. The city is now claiming that the water that it wilfully sold on at a premium rate was not to specification. We understand that desalination is no longer considered a viable water augmentation solution for the city. The city appears to view this as a reason not to honour existing contracts.
More: Cape Argus