Pretoria - The Gauteng provincial Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) department is closely monitoring the City of Johannesburg's billing system as part of its intervention strategy.
Gauteng CoGTA MEC, Humphrey Mmemezi, highlighted this as one of his resolutions when he handed in his report to acting CoGTA Minister, Nathi Mthethwa, in Cape Town today.
The City has been embroiled in a billing system fiasco, which executive mayor Amos Masondo has since attributed to problems arising from the implementation of the IT project known as Programme Phakama, designed to improve the billing system.
The report comes after Mmemezi was asked to investigate the causes of the problems of the system, what the City was doing to resolve them and also report on the situation of the billing systems in other Gauteng municipalities in general.
Mmemezi's report gave the background and nature of the problems, an action plan by the City to resolve them and showed a marked improvement since the intervention.
The report showed 12 problem areas investigated, action taken to resolve them, the department or entity responsible for resolving them, the time-line the resolution was expected to take and the impact on customers.
The MEC reported on the actions the City had taken on the issues of incorrect stand and physical addresses, exorbitant billing amounts, deeds transfers that were not updated on the billing system, estimated metres, wrongly printed statements, incorrect cut-offs and other problems that had caused an uproar among Johannesburg residents.
The report further included progress Mmemezi's office had achieved on the 81 queries that had been received by his office from the Public Protector regarding billing system problems.
It was reported that 70 per cent of the queries received had been resolved.
Mthethwa said based on the report submitted by Mmemezi's office, his ministry is confident that the issues are being resolved.
"We would like to reiterate our apology for any inconvenience caused and appeal to residents of Johannesburg to work with the City in resolving any outstanding matters," he said.
