Water-service disconnection for sanitation debt under consumer-protection statutes: a comparative doctrinal analysis linking debt-recovery silence to procedural-fairness claims by joint occupants

Consumer-protection statutes in several African jurisdictions authorise water-service disconnection for non-payment but say nothing about how a utility should treat a joint occupant who did not incur the sanitation debt. The analysis compares the consumer-protection and water-services frameworks of South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, reading each statute against the constitutional and administrative-law principles that govern utility action. It argues that debt-recovery silence is not a neutral gap but a delegation of procedural discretion to the utility, and that this delegation triggers a duty to afford notice, an opportunity to contest the debt and a reasoned decision before disconnection. It concludes that consumer-protection statutes should be read as incorporating procedural-fairness requirements rather than as exhaustive codes, and that this reading reconciles utility debt recovery with the constitutional protection of access to water.