Billing queries delay could cost Joburg millions

The City of Joburg is faced with a multimillion-rand fine because of its failure to sort out its still-festering billing crisis.

THE City of Joburg is faced with a multimillion-rand fine because of its failure to sort out its still-festering billing crisis.

Tomorrow, the National Consumer Commission plans to slap the embattled municipality with a notice giving it 14 days in which to resolve 50 of the 200 billing complaints lodged with it.

When the National Credit Act came into effect, in April, disgruntled residents went to the commission with their billing crisis grievances.

The metro has repeatedly denied that there is a crisis.

City officials have faced criticism from hundreds of residents and a minister because of their failure to deal with the billing complaints, which they blame on the R580-million Project Phakama, which involves the reconfiguration of computerised billing for municipal services, implemented in November 2009.

Mamodupi Mohlala, the consumer commissioner, said that if the municipality failed to correct the complaints within two weeks, she would refer 50 of the complaints to the commission's tribunal, which had the power to impose on the metro a fine of up to R1-million per query.

"In terms of our procedures, we have a turnaround time of seven days ... now what is happening is that the City of Joburg was responding within the seven days, and now we are finding out that they are slowing down, and this is obviously delaying the resolution of those matters, and we feel that the consumers cannot continue to be prejudiced," she said.

She said the compliance notices would be issued in terms of the Consumer Protection Act.

"'[This is] a formal notification to the city to say we have been having this discussion and we have been asking you to comply; you have failed to comply."

Mohlala said among the complaints she regards as "unacceptable" was the case of a pensioner whose application for a services rebate has been lost three times by the municipality since August.

Stan Maphologela, spokesman for Johannesburg's revenue and customer relations department, denied that the city was still dealing with 200 unresolved queries.

He said the city had received 141 queries, of which 60% (71) had been resolved.

These included issues with electricity bills (25), metre readings (15), rates and taxes (11), water (8) and credit control (4).

Lee Cahill, a founder of the Joburg Advocacy Group, which represents residents' associations across Johannesburg, appealed to residents who believe that they have been prejudiced to report their billing queries to the consumer commission.

"It goes without saying that we feel the city's handling of the entire billing crisis has been inexcusable, especially because the failure to resolve disputes timeously is in direct contravention of section 5 of the Municipal Systems Act," Cahill said.