The billing crisis in Johannesburg has prompted the Co-operative Governance Minister, Sicelo Shiceka to summon the City of Joburg’s MEC to a meeting this week to discuss the city’s inability to provide residents with accurate accounts.

Democratic Alliance councillor Dave Dewes has initiated a class action lawsuit against the city manager, Mavela Dlamini, who is being sued for failing to perform his duties. So far about 40 people have joined but a further R25 000 is needed to secure the services of a senior advocate.

Shiceka says that he is considering introducing special legislation that would give the South African Revenue Services control of billing, collection of rates and service levies for all municipalities.

He says that billing and revenue collection is a national issue and should be the responsibility of agencies such as the SARS. Shiceka says that when he lived in Johannesburg he also received incorrect accounts and this made him as angry as those tens of thousands of Johannesburg citizens are right now.

Johannesburg’s council is currently owed about R28-billion and, countrywide, municipalities are owed about R70-billion in unpaid bills because of tardy revenue collection procedures.

The high-level crisis meeting follows the city’s disconnection of services to 41 000 households and many of them claim that they are victims of incorrect bills and have been charged patently incorrect amounts.

The council says the failure of Project Phakama, a R580-million accounting system that was supposed to streamline accounting procedures caused the problems. The city estimates that it will take another six to 12 months to get the billing system working properly.

There are numerous reports of people having services suspended even though they use a pre-paid water and electricity metering system. Democratic Alliance councillor Dave Dewes has initiated a class action lawsuit against the city manager, Mavela Dlamini, who is being sued for failing to perform his duties.

So far about 40 people have joined the class action and they have already contributed about R35 000 that will be used for legal costs to bring an urgent application to the courts. Dewes says that a further R25 000 is needed to secure the services of a senior advocate.

Readers' Comments Have a comment about this article? Email us now. 

I was one of the 41000 people disconnected last week and stood in line for just over 3 hours to attempt to resolve my concern. This was unsuccessful and I was left to pay the outstanding amount before being reconnected (which only happened at 21h30 that night). I would like to join in the class action lawsuit, could you provide me with more information? - Ricardo 

How do we go about charging them for fraud for incorrect billing - Aneesha

Hi Ricardo. You can contact David Dewes via email - victorian@icon.co.za - Julia Hinton, Property24 Editor 

 Apart from being charged massively high bills every month. I think my bill for October/November was R9000. They charged me on meter numbers that do not exist anymore. THEY came and changed the meters with new meters and numbers but still charge on the old meter numbers. They have no record of the new meter numbers even though they are the ones that installed them. So just been told to pay an average amount every month which I know is still to high considering we dont use that much electricity. They can't even take the actual readings because they dont have the new meter numbers. I was told it had to do with the new IT system the put in place and the data take on was incorrectly done by the consultants. - Andrew 

You think Johannesburg is bad, Ekhurleni is just as bad, if not worse. And I am not surprised that these people don’t want work. Someone needs to look at the buildings in Edenvale. Even though It was shut down for repairs last year for 2 months, The water still comes in and floods the place and the Toilets have not been working properly in over 12 months. The phones never work because the lines are down because of flooding. And when you do eventually get through no one answers the phones or they pick up and have a fat conversation with their friends and ignore you while you pay for the call. Heaven help you there should be an emergency you get told it’s not their to job call an electrician as happened in December when the box on a light pole shorted and started a large fire knocking out the entire street in the process. When the lights do go out during a failure like last week. It took us hours to get through and when we did no-one had a clue as to what was wrong or how long it would take to be repaired. The infrastructure is a mess and never updated or  maintained so how do they expect it work. Billing is never right, and no-one is prepared to listen to you, no-one is taking the calls anyway. You just pay so you don’t get cut off. If you are lucky enough to get through to someone who is willing to help, there tools don’t work. The whole system whether you are in the West, East, South or North is just a mess. And this new accounting package that cost so much money, Just like the E-NATIS system which we will throw out in a couple of year because the untrained, incompetent fools who work on it, just have no clue. Time every on stands up and does something about it. We allow Eskom and our Municipalities to get away with it,  We complain but nothing ever changes. It’s like banging your head on the wall everyday and expecting it not to hurt like it did yesterday. It’s up to us to do something and get our voices heard. We can’t just keep paying and not get any worth for our money. - Desiree Rowe