Project Consolidate, a two-year trial project aimed at sorting out the billing malaise that has plagued municipalities for years, has kicked off with the help of private industry.
The companies involved will do so at their own cost, with the eventual winner chosen to implement its system across all of the country`s 284 municipalities.
Launched last week by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG), Project Consolidate will be a two-year trial involving 18 IT companies that will implement billing solutions in a number of municipalities.
"The project seeks to improve billing systems, support municipalities with 'data cleansing` as well as develop a new system to cater for an improved local government," says DPLG spokesman Xolani Xundu.
Municipal service billing has become a contentious issue in a number of regions, the most prominent being Johannesburg, where confusion over municipal boundaries, mismanaged accounting practices and incorrect billing angered ratepayers.
Improved municipal billing is also important for the national government`s R1 billion job creation plan, the Extended Public Works Programme, which will ultimately be carried out at local government level.
Western Cape local government MEC Marius Fransman says Cedarberg had been identified as one of the municipalities as a pilot for the implementation of the project.
Fransman says 11 other municipalities in the province have been identified to receive assistance with regard to infrastructure development, customer service, debt collection, service delivery and the provision of basic services.
Those municipalities include Cape Town, Matzikama, Witzenberg, Theewaterskloof, Kannaland, Laingsburg, Prince Albert, Beaufort West, Central Karoo, Rietpoort and De Doorns.
He says people will be deployed to each municipality early next year to collect data on the needs of every household.
"They will do an analysis of everyone in those communities in order to create a database on exactly what is the need per household, specifically in those Project Consolidate areas," Fransman says.
Other municipalities involved in the national Project Consolidate are: North West Province - Mafikeng and Moretele; Free State - Matjhabeng; Gauteng - Johannesburg; Mphumalanga - Dr JS Moroka; Eastern Cape - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality and Buffalo City Municipality; KwaZulu-Natal - Umgeni and Kokstad; and Northern Cape - Tsantsabane.
The companies supporting the project are: Accenture, Business Connexion, Bytes Specialised Services, Commercial and Industrial Computer Services, Commsco SA, Debt Pay, EDS, Fujitsu Services SA, Ingwe Technical Services, Magnificus Technologies, PSU International, RentWorks Africa, SAP, Sebata Municipal Solutions, SkyStorm Electronics, Tlhakano, UCS Software Holdings and Utility Risk Management.
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