The City of Johannesburg’s Revenue Department has reported a serious failure in its customer statement delivery system relating to the April accounts.  This failure has resulted in approximately 412 000 accounts not being issued monthly statements with a further 97 000 accounts statements being issued incorrectly.

This is an automated system that has never produced an error of this magnitude before. It is therefore suspected that the system was tampered with. I have issued an instruction within the City to engage with law enforcement agencies and the cyber-crimes unit so as to investigate the cause of the failure.

As a City, the revenue we generate constitutes 84% of our budget and the implications of a delay in collecting revenue from this number of accounts could have dire effects on our cash flow.

Our ability to address the enormous service delivery backlogs which we have inherited depends almost entirely upon our success in collecting revenue. We are currently working to ensure that all accounts are issued during the course of this week, and that accounts which were issued incorrectly are rectified.

This will result in certain households receiving two statements this month; we apologise for any confusion caused. Double billing is a historical issue in our City and we have plans in place to ensure that it is a thing of the past by the end of June, 2017.

We appeal to all residents effected by this confusion to proceed to make payment based on the historical average billing of their accounts.

Customers may also call Joburg Connect on 0860 Joburg (562 874) to enquire how much they owe. Where customer requires a copy of their account, they may visit their nearest Customer Service Centre or call the City’s Call Centre.

I would like to personally assure the residents of the City of Johannesburg that this matter is receiving our highest levels of attention.

We ask for the patience of our residents as we work to address this matter and express our deepest appreciation for their continued understanding of the challenges we have inherited.

Cllr Herman Mashaba

Executive Mayor

City of Johannesburg

For further information, please contact:

Luyanda Mfeka

Media Specialist – Office of the Executive Mayor

City of Johannesburg

Tel: 011 407 6727

Cellular: 076 171 5978

Email: luyandam@joburg.org.za