The Star<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0said that the city was still receiving close to 15,000 new billing complaints a month, and there was currently a backlog of over 44,000 queries as of March 2017.<\/p>\n\u201cThis number is increasing because of constant estimations of consumption, which are often thumb-sucked by meter readers,\u201d Dagaba said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was embarrassing to write off R8 billion debt two years ago, which was said to be non-traceable, but could have been traced. It is not necessarily corruption \u2013 it could be that the data is incorrect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dagaba also highlighted current issues surrounding the city’s\u00a0property valuation system, with the city having to file over 60,000 objections against its own service provider due to incorrect evaluations.<\/p>\n
However, these incorrect evaluations work both ways, warned Dagaba, noting\u00a0that while many residents were being overcharged on their metered readings, there were thousands of\u00a0property owners whose properties are undervalued and\u00a0should be paying much more.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll round, we will be collecting more money aggressively, which will not make us popular. This has to be done as we estimate that out of 150 properties, only about 120 are sent bills,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The review of Johannesburg’s billing systems follows a continued push by new city mayor, Herman Mashaba, to root out corruption across the city.<\/p>\n
Speaking at his first State of the City address as mayor earlier in May,\u00a0Mashaba noted that since his inauguration in August 2016, a\u00a0zero-tolerance approach to fraud and corruption has led to the city uncovering R10\u00a0billion in lost or misused funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis figure is utterly sickening,\u201d Mashaba said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis money should have been utilised to provide much needed service delivery to communities throughout Johannesburg \u2013 especially the poor. That is why we will continue to vigorously pursue every allegation of corruption. The days of a gentle slap on the wrist, or redeployment to another department, are over.”<\/p>\n
\nRead:\u00a0Over half of Joburg and Durban\u2019s water is \u201cmissing\u201d due to leaks and illegal usage<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City of Joburg’s billing crisis is much worse than initially thought says member of the mayoral committee (MMC) responsible for finance, Rabelani Dagada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":116610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-174107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174107"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174199,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174107\/revisions\/174199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}