THE Johannesburg revenue department has assured property developers that it is working to reduce delays in issuing clearance certificates, which have had serious implications for some developments, and it hopes more than 10 000 property transfers will be reflected on the billing system by the end of next month.

Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo admitted recently that besides billing issues caused by the IT system, Project Phakama, there had been problems with the interface between the system and the Deeds Office leading to delays in issuing clearance certificates, which had affected property transfers and refunds.

Complaints about the delays had seen the situation improve, but from October things had begun to slow down again.

“Another item which we are starting to correct relates to the flagging of prepaid meters on the billing system. Our migration of accounts to the new system has not gone without teething problems, and one of the issues is that it does not always recognise prepaid meters, so electricity bills for conventional meters are being drawn up,” the revenue department confirmed on Friday.

This is also supposed to be corrected by the end of next month.

City revenue spokesman Stan Maphologela warned it could take six to 12 months to have Project Phakama up and running effectively. One of the reasons for this delay was that people had not been properly trained to run the system.

Many customers reported inaccurate and inflated bills, often for tens of thousands of rands. For the past year, the city has been unable to bill correctly due, it says, to the failure of its R580m Project Phakama — which was meant to integrate municipal services accounts into one database to avoid human error.

The system has been unable to process meter readings, resulting in residents being billed with estimates. The billing chaos has also led to prepaid water and electricity users receiving bills.

Earlier this month irate Johannesburg ratepayers staged a sit-in at the city’s revenue offices in Thuso House, Braamfontein.

However, the city said on Friday that meter reading was improving. In September 70,3% of meters were read, and this increased last month to 77,76%.

The city is still receiving a high volume of complaints, however. On average 150 000 calls are received and answered by the call centre every month.

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Source: Business Day