Durban — The eThekwini Municipality’s Revenue Management System, which has given ratepayers billing nightmares for more than five years, is expected to be fully operational – with no glitches.
DA councillor Riona Gokool received feedback to her questions at a full council meeting last Thursday, on why the system kept crashing when users try to upload their electricity and water meter readings.
Gokool said residents were sent estimated bills and when the municipality finally did actual readings – sometimes after two years – residents are sent exorbitant bills which they are expected to pay or face disconnections.
In response to some of Gokool’s questions, the municipality said all problems with the system were resolved on June 17 this year, except for the upload feature for supporting documents for readings that are not within range.
“There is a delay when the document is uploading to the Document Management System which causes the app to time out. The development team is currently working on the issue,” a statement read.
The city stated that currently there was no maintenance and support contract and the system was supported by internal resources. This was a new module on the e-services platform.
Gokool asked what back-up plan the municipality had for when the system fails – when users are unable to access the system for weeks on end.
In response, the city said there was manual reading by meter readers, and residents could visit the revenue customer centre or call their contact centre.
“The email function was recently deactivated due to the migration from Novell GroupWise as was used at electricity to Microsoft. Electricity ICT team were informed of expediting the changeover on meter reading emails,” a statement read.
Gokool asked if the system was effective and efficient in capturing water and electricity meter readings, to give customers more accurate bills, to which the city replied: “Yes, the system integrates directly to the Billing/ Revenue Management System.”
Gokool was also concerned about water and electricity meter readers not being dispatched to capture customers’ readings to avoid inaccurate bills. The city stated that the electricity meter readers were dispatched on pre-designed routes to read meters.
Their existing methodology is to read business customers’ meters on a monthly basis and residential customers’ meters every three months. Industrial customers’ meters are read electronically on a monthly basis.
One of the main challenges experienced by meter readers was lack of access to properties when they are dispatched to read electricity meters. The city said many residents’ electricity meters were within their properties and generally behind locked gates.
In these instances of no access, the meter reader will leave a meter card in a post box for the customer to fill out and communicate with the meter reader.
Daily News