The City of Johannesburg is setting up a team that will deal with billing queries escalated by councillors, which will be in place by the end of this month.
Thousands of residents were affected by billing problems when the city started moving its disparate legacy systems onto a SAP platform, through a project code-named Phakama, in November 2009.
The move, at a reported cost of about R1 billion, was wrapped up in June 2010. However, it resulted in incorrect statements, inaccurate meter readings and a lack of service from the city's call centre.
Last November, the city unveiled a revenue and billing roadmap that aims to fill all the gaps and correct all the flaws with its problematic systems over a period of 19 months.
Democratic Alliance councillor Linus Muller, co-ordinator of the party's billing assistance team, says it has been assisting more than 1 000 rate payers with billing and revenue queries over the last few months. He says the team has been escalating queries on behalf of residents and businesses.
However, finance MMC Geoffrey Makhubo has now requested that this practice stops, says Muller. Makhubo's team is putting together a group to assist with councillor-related queries, which will be in place by the end of the month, he adds.
Residents will be required to follow up with the city at least three times before billing issues can be escalated, Muller says. At the end of last month, there were 109 000 queries in its system, 56 000 of which relate to revenue.
Muller says the party welcomes any intervention to resolve the situation, which is continuing unabated. He says he recently handed over 500 queries dating back to 2009.
However, Muller says he will approach the provincial government to intervene if the team is not in place by the end of the month.
ITWeb unsuccessfully attempted to get comment from the city this morning.
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