Despite objections from the Democratic Alliance (DA), the City of Johannesburg is ready to roll with the new system of sending municipal statements to residents via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).
Spokesperson for the Member of the Mayoral Council (MMC) for Finance, Zoleka Zide, said the City intends to start with the MMS statements very soon.
“Preparations are close to being done and within a few days we should be able to start,” said Zide.
According to Zide the initial pilot to the project was carried out in 2012.
“MMS statements were sent to a sample of residents and their opinions about the product were recorded via an interactive mobi site and the findings were favourable,” explained Zide.
DA billing spokesperson councillor Linus Muller said there are many things that the City needs to clarify to the residents before they go ahead with implementing the new system.
“Overall I do not feel we have had the opportunity to fully investigate a system that is going to affect hundreds of thousands of residents and has the potential to be yet another step along the billing crisis Johannesburg has been experiencing for years,” said Linus.
Zide said the service would be provided by a third party supplier.
“The third party supplier of this service is a reputable MMS company that has been sending millions of MMSes per month for many blue chip companies and governmental organisations for many years,” said Zide.
Municipal MMS statements started in 2010 and eighteen municipalities in South Africa are already sending their statements in this format. According to Zide, countless hours of testing have been done on any and every type of phone.
They have the ability to detect the handset the recipient uses before they send the message, making it possible to send the message in the size and format that best fits the recipient’s phone or screen.
The residents can at any time contact the City’s call centre or visit the walk-in contact centres to opt-out of MMS statements. Residents can choose the medium they prefer to receive their statements; MMS, email or print.
