A back office was established earlier this year within the revenue department to deal with the over 48 000 open billing queries of which 26 000 are 90 to 365 days old.
According to the acting director of billing, Mahlala Boleu, resolving billing queries has been moved from the operations of individual regional centres and centralised to the head office.
There has been no negative effect after this change, he said, and queries that have been double-logged have reduced.
The back office has, as of 19 May, reduced the queries to 12 600.
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MMC for Finance, Dr Rabelani Dagada assured in his budget speech recently that the billing crisis that Joburg residents have been facing for many years will die down in March next year. He said that more queries will be resolved within 30 days by then.
Asked what would make the billing headache, well, less of a headache for both the City and residents, Dagada said by sending through actual monthly meter readings, you could help ease the billing issue.
There is not yet a telephone number available, but customers can send their account number, meter number, stand number, name and surname, telephone or cellphone number, current meter reading and date to backoffice@joburg.org.za
Read: City of Johannesburg’s R357-million billing crisis game plan
However, problems with accounts soon surfaced again and on 24 May it was announced that the City’s customer statement delivery system experienced a major error implicating half a million April accounts. Mayor Herman Mashaba suspected the system was tampered with and instructed authorities to investigate.
