Johannesburg - The City of Johannesburg on Thursday unveiled details of its new billing system which authorities hope will improve the city's billing practices which have caused frustration to thousands of residents.
The city has come under fire in recent years for having constant problems with its billing system. Challenges range from overbilling of customers to some rate payers not receiving their statements on time.
Officials are adamant, however, that the new system - dubbed Programme Phakama - will ensure greater functionality in the areas of metered services, billing, collections, customer services and payments which will now be operated under one call centre to be situated in the city centre.
The system will further ensure accounts are centralised into one billing database instead of accounts being compiled from multiple municipal-service databases.
The initial cost of installing the new system was estimated at R250 million but the cost has since escalated to around R580 million due to delays in its implementation. The city's Finance Director, Parks Tau, attributed the delay to unscrupulous service providers initially awarded tenders to implement the programme.
Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, Johannesburg Mayor Amos Masondo said a welcome change was a new internal system that will give ratepayers "a single entry point" into the city on a common IT platform.
Masondo said it was inevitable that current customer practices will change as a result of the new system. These include new billing dates, changes in meter reading dates, changes in invoicing dates, issuing of refunds and issuing of statements.
Residents will now be able to dial up a single call centre, irrespective of what challenges they have and be helped on the spot by a trained call centre agent. In the past, different sections such as Pikitup, City Power and Joburg Water had different call centres to deal with individual queries.
There are currently more than 1.2 million people registered on the city's database and their details are being captured and consolidated into one, unified system, ensuring residents receive one bill from the city.
"We are aware that that some accounts have been impacted not receiving monthly statements regularly in the last months. However, there are internal processes put in place to handle and deal with this problem," Masondo said.
He said while the transition would lead to frustration to a section of residents, the city remained committed to iron out all problems to ensure normal services resumed as soon as possible.
