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Finance MMC Jongizizwe Dlabathi wants the billing function taken from CIO Moloko Monyepao’s ICT unit to finance.

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Sizwe sama Yende

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The billing problems in the City of Ekurhuleni are normal day to day issues that do not require the intervention of a crisis management committee or declaration of a disaster.

This is according to the city’s chief information officer (CIO) , Moloko Monyepao, in response to finance member of mayoral committee (MMC) Jongizizwe Dlabathi’s widely publicised claims that the billing function had to be located in the finance department.

The function is under the Information Communication Technology (ICT) unit that Monyepao heads. Ekurhuleni residents owe the municipality R43 billion for unpaid services, rates and taxes.

“The challenges, really, is with regard to the location of the metre reading management and we have now identified the problem and we are tabling a report to the executive mayor to take full responsibility of metre reading as finance. Currently, that function is facilitated by the ICT and we find that probably to be a weakness in the system because it is finance that uses the data,” Dlabathi had claimed.

“The reality is that we did not have contractors in place to ensure accurate metre reading and that borders on our ability to bill customers in a manner that is acceptable to the extent that they are able to pay for that which they found to be acceptable.”

Dlabathi did not respond to The People’s Eye’s written questions sent to him on Monday this week.

He had also been saying that the municipality would go on a drive to encourage community members to approach the customer care or finance unit with their interim bills to be reconciled with the actual metre reading.

“Whilst we deal with operational weaknesses, we at least create a platform for our customers to come forth, bring their actual readings, reconcile and ensure they are billed correctly,” Dlabathi had said.

Dlabathi added that Extended Public Works Programme personnel would be deployed to households  to assist with metre reading and bring accurate information to the municipality.

Monyepao however dismissed Dlabathi’s claims.

“As far as I am aware I really don’t know where the question comes from. The billing system we using has been there since 2017 and it never had any issues until we heard of it on social Media or TV,” said Monyepao.

He said that billing problems were resolved as and when ICT received complaints logged on the incident management system.

“We get from time to time request from citizens complaining about certain issues about billing but those are normal issues that we deal with day by day. Nothing that requires a crisis management committee to be called and declare a disaster,” Monyepao said.

Monyepao insisted that the billing system worked perfectly, and  the municipality had been using it to properly bill customers for over five years. He said ICT continuously improved the system by adding efficiency and effectiveness on the process through automation.

Monyepao said the billing system was part of the solar financial system that was implemented in 2017. He said that it was upgraded.

“The metre management system is our internally developed and continuously improved system. It was developed more than three years ago through professional services and has been continuously improved by adding things like WhatsApp where customers can send their reading via WhatsApp or via My CoE app. This system was a replacement of a manual system where metres were read manually and consolidated into an excel spreadsheet then downloaded into the billing system,” he explained.