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Joburg fails residents

Nicola Mawson
By Nicola Mawson, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 18 Jul 2012

The City of Johannesburg has failed to keep its promise of solving all pre-October 2011 queries by the end of last month, as residents continue to complain about its billing system.

The city last month said it would have resolved about 200 000 billing-related queries by the end of June, in line with its November promise. Thousands of residents had issues with their statements after the city moved its disparate systems onto a SAP platform through a project codenamed Phakama. The move cost at least R580 million.

In March, there were about 100 000 queries from the city's 1.3 million accountholders that related to billing issues. Of these, 66 000 dated back from the end of October, while 35 000 were “new” queries lodged since November.

The city also said it was working on resolving current queries within 30 days, with a view to resolving all new queries within 30 days by August. By 26 June, it claimed to have solved more than 85% of the backlog and now says 98% of issues have been sorted out.

However, there are several complaints on consumer forums that have not been resolved, some of which date back more than two years.

No answers

Lee Cahill, founding member of Joburg Advocacy Group, says based on the non-profit group's own experience and on resident commentary in various forums, it cannot accept the city's claims that all billing queries, other than those logged in the last 30 days, have been resolved.

“The city has always been 'economical' with its stats on the billing crisis, but since the appointment of the new city manager, Trevor Fowler, it has failed to release any statistics whatsoever on billing complaints and disputes.”

Cahill points out that if 200 000 queries were to have been resolved between 1 November 2011 and the end of June, the city would have had to solve about 1 200 queries every single working day, over the past eight months.

“Statistics available on Mobilitate indicate that only 8.8% of billing queries logged on the site have been resolved,” says Cahill. “The gap between these publicly-available statistics and the city's claims indicate only one thing: that the city is consciously misinforming its residents and the public in general.”

Cahill says the city is working on the billing backlog as it is under enormous pressure from residents and civil society groups to do so. However, she adds: “It's clear to us that the Joburg billing crisis is far from over.”

Almost there

Stan Maphologela, deputy director of customer communications in the city's revenue and customer relations department, says “great progress has been made and it would be totally wrong to suggest that there is a lack of resolution”.

Maphologela says less than 2% of the backlog queries remained open at the end of June. He says the outstanding queries had some technical difficulties, such as wrapping up deceased estates, backlogs in change of ownership matters triggered by a delay in receiving files from the deeds, as well as problems as a result of a lack of access to meters and broken meters.

More than 90% of queries are now resolved within 30 days, says Maphologela. He says where issues are not solved within 30 days, it is due to issues such as faulty meters that need to be sorted out before customers' statements can be rectified.

Dated issues

A HelloPeter complaint, lodged on Monday, states the city owes the consumer a refund dating back to February 2010, despite visits to its offices and proof of payment being supplied.

Another, from last week, indicates that rates for a property bought a year ago have yet to be processed. Yet another consumer writes that the city has failed to open an account for a property bought in November 2010.

There are also complaints on mobilitate.co.za. One person says they finally received a bill after two years, but the city wants payment immediately, after two years of the resident attempting to settle amounts.

Another consumer has an ongoing dispute about a refund dating back to December 2009, while one resident says her call was closed as the city said it had insufficient information to resolve it. “I think they are closing open calls without resolving them to get the numbers down.”

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