The City of Johannesburg has announced a “serious failure” in its customer statement delivery system with regards to April accounts.
The city’s billing system is at crisis levels‚ Finance MMC Rabelani Dagada said in his budget address on Tuesday.
On Wednesday mayor Herman Mashaba said in a statement this failure in the customer service delivery system resulted in 412‚000 accounts not being issued‚ while 97‚000 statements were issued incorrectly.
He however emphasised that the city is currently working to ensure that all accounts are issued during this week‚ and that those issued incorrectly are corrected.
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“This will result in certain households receiving two statements this month; we apologise for any confusion caused. Double billing is a historical issue in our City and we have plans in place to ensure that it is a thing of the past by the end of June 2017‚” Mashaba said‚
Mashaba said the automated system has never produced an error of this margin‚ and that they suspect the system had been tampered with. He has instructed the city to engage with law enforcement agencies and the cyber crimes unit to investigate this failure.
84% of Johannesburg's budget is made up of the revenue generated by the city. Mashaba says the implications of a delay in collecting revenue‚ could “have dire effects on our cash flow”.
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Mashaba says the city’s ability to address the service delivery backlogs depend on their success in collecting revenue.
He appealed to affected residents to make payments based on the historical average billing on their accounts.
- TMG Digital/BusinessLIVE
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