The Phoenix Financial system is a total disaster. For the past 12 months consumers has been on the shortest end of the stick while the municipality desperately tried to make the system work.
A municipal team was taken to Tlokwe and Newcastle Municipalities by the service provider and were excited about the possibilities the new system has in store.
However their excitement was short lived as the system had teething problems from the start go.
Right out of the starting blocks things went wrong. Residents did not receive accounts and when the accounts finally came, it was a mess.
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“We were double billed for municipal services, on the same account amounts were added and subtracted. This resulted in a mumble-jumble and we were told to pay what we normally do plus a little extra just in case. Not wanting a surprise at the end of the next month, that is exactly what we did,” said concerned resident Mr John Cornish.
During a meeting with the municipality on June 13 the chief financial officer, Ms Jabulile Hlatshwayo said no training were given to municipal staff working with finances. She said the staff is frustrated and so is the consumer.
Yet in a written response she said the staff is capable to work on any system,
“Malicious training was provided, but not to the satisfaction of the users. Yes, the staff is capable to work on any system as the process is still the same and training manuals were provided but it proved to be difficult to follow them, without any full formal training.”
Armed with questions and inaccurate municipal accounts WITBANK NEWS’s assistant editor Zita Goldswain met up with the municipality on Friday, June 13.
This ‘untrained’ staff is the first hurdle the consumer has to approach when they go and enquire about their municipal accounts.
Govan Mbeki Local Municipality kicked the Phoenix System out because they failed the municipality, but in Emalahleni they were given a year without any results.
When asked why nothing was done sooner she said the municipality could not take the risk to move from one service provider to the other because they do not want to compromise their data and audit.
According to Hlatshwayo a letter was written to the national and provincial treasury to complain about the Phoenix Financial System.
Several emails were sent to the service provider to get their side of the story, but there has been no feedback from them.
The municipality said they will take extra steps to help residents with their municipal accounts.
