The City of Johannesburg's billing system is in such a chaotic state that the Democratic Alliance (DA) is calling for mayor Amos Masondo's head, with just months to go before municipal elections.
In addition, cooperative governance and traditional affairs minister Sicelo Shiceka is reportedly stepping in to try and resolve the issues plaguing Johannesburg residents. Media reports indicate the minister will meet his Gauteng MEC, Humphrey Memezi, this week to discuss the issue.
Thousands of residents have been affected by the city's chaotic billing system, which has being problematic since the council started migrating its assorted billing platforms onto SAP. According to the city's official Web site, Johannesburg is SA's economic hub and generates 17% of SA's wealth.
DA councillor John Mendelsohn says Masondo must resign, because of the billing mess. He says Johannesburg residents call the official opposition on a daily basis with account problems that range from over-inflated bills to services being cut-off unfairly.
Up to 65 000 residents - or about 5% of Johannesburg's 1.3 million account holders - are having issues with their billing. The city last week admitted “some accounts have been impacted” by SAP implementation in the last few months.
Mendelsohn says the issue is “very urgent” as this kind of mess is “unprecedented in any metropolitan in SA”. Johannesburg residents are being “persecuted” by the city's inability to fulfil its legislative duty to correctly bill residents, and collect the money, he says.
The root cause of the problem is the city's implementation of the SAP system, which has been code-named Phakama, says Mendelsohn. He says the cost to the taxpayers, so far, is at least R830 million - and rising.
The city has tried to minimise the issue, argues Mendelsohn, and last December would only admit to 4 000 accounts being affected by the SAP migration. He says Masondo must step down, and any political damage that may be caused months before the elections is not the DA's problem.
Mendelsohn says the issue is coming to a head. “The crap is going to fly thick and fast,” he says, adding that Shiceka's involvement is a vote of “no confidence” in Masondo.
Despite the problems reported in the press during implementation, SAP awarded the city's project the System Application Products Quality Award, for its successful implementation.
No urgency
The city finished implementing Phakama in June last year, six months after the project started. In August, Masondo promised improved service to residents, and said the city was capturing account details and consolidating these onto the unified SAP system.
However, despite having several months to move data from its assorted divisions, this process was ongoing as of last week.
Stan Maphologela, deputy director of customer communications in the city's revenue and customer relations department, said last week the issue was limited to less than 5% of the city's 1.3 million billable customers, which equates to 65 000 accounts.
Maphologela explained that the process of moving the city's various databases onto the SAP platform, and ensuring the integrity of the information, was the cause of the billing issue.
Mendelsohn and fellow councillor Patrick Atkinson tried unsuccessfully to raise the debacle at council level in December, but the speaker said it wasn't urgent, says Mendelsohn. “It goes without saying that an IT system must measure up to two basic criteria: simplicity of operation and capacity to render its intended service.
“A year after the commencement of Johannesburg's rollout of its migration of its IT system from the Venus system to the SAP system... it is becoming more and more clear that the project is not meeting those two criteria, and is possibly a complete failure," say Atkinson and Mendelsohn, both of whom sit on the city's finance committee.
DA Gauteng caucus whip Fred Nel welcomed Shiceka's involvement, but urged him to act decisively. “If municipal financial management in Gauteng is not strengthened very soon, major government bailouts will become necessary to save local authorities from outright bankruptcy.”
Maphologela did not immediately respond to a request for comment; however, ITWeb understands there was press conference this morning to address the issue, to which ITWeb was not invited.
Share