[My Water and Lights doubled – for no reason – for a few months. It seems they have now fixed it. Everyone in my neighbourhood suffered from this problem. But it took them several months to catch up. I have become completely paranoid over my water and lights bills in recent years because I question its relation to my real usage, and I’ve started keeping my own records now. If I pay them, it takes 2 months before it reflects on my statements.

In the street where I live, water began leaking out of a pipe. The water ran down the street for 3 weeks before they fixed it today!! Another friend of mine has some lamp posts outside his house which he’s been trying to get the Municipality to fix. He’s been trying to get them to look at it for months. He’s just given up. Sometimes street lights in our suburbs and roads work – and sometimes they don’t. Que sera sera – nobody cares any more. Crisis… becomes the order of the day… Jan]

Johannesburg – The City of Johannesburg does not have a billing crisis, but a service crisis, its finance department said on Thursday.

“It is not really accurate to say we have a billing crisis, but rather to say we have a customer service crisis,” said Roland Hunter, acting head of the city’s revenue shared services centre.

“If you say billing crisis you get the impression we have a cash flow problems, and that was never so,” he said at a briefing of the portfolio committee on local government in the Gauteng provincial legislature on solving the city’s revenue challenges.

“Until we re-establish our credibility with customers, that will remain a problem,” he said.

The city’s revenue collection has been plagued with problems including unread meters, incorrect bills and ratepayers battling to get queries resolved quickly or at all.

Restructure

Hunter attributed some of the problems to the fragmented way in which the city institutions were designed, low staff morale, cash collection issues and the way arrears and indigent account holders were handled.

The city is planning to completely restructure its revenue organisation by establishing a new institution.

This would ensure customers only have to deal with one person when dealing with the city.

“No one is going to say revenue is the worst part of the city. Everybody is going to say revenue is the best part of the city,” Hunter said.

All the city institutions would also share a single computer software package to ensure compatibility and get rid of fragmentation.

The new body would also have to achieve economies of scale.

In the meantime, the city has introduced various short-term measures to alleviate the problems.

The city had improved the rate at which it is resolving queries.

Last July it had 49 469 unresolved queries, while by the end of May this stood at 17 077.

Its cash collection rate had improved to about 92% each month and the city was issuing 84% of refunds within 30 days.

The time taken to resolve queries had also improved.

Edited by Elmarie Jack

Source: News24.Com
URL: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/New…/p>