Roland Hunter, CEO in the City's revenue department Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg

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City reports record revenue collection THE City's revenue department has made a record collection of rates, some R7,6-billion, for the 2004/05 financial year. August 10, 2005 By Ndaba Dlamini THE City of Johannesburg is making steady progress in its efforts to eradicate revenue and billing problems that have affected the city over the past years - and has managed to record the highest ever cash collection rates over a three-month period to June 2005. Executive Mayor Amos Masondo said the City had a cash collection target of R7,6-billion for the 2004/05 financial year, exceeding the yearly target by R164-million. Masondo was speaking during a media briefing on Wednesday 10 August. Executive Mayor Amos Masondo, city manager Pascal Moloi and CEO in the City's revenue department Roland Hunter Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg The significant stride was due to the City's credit control policy and the overall improvement in its revenue systems and processes, according to Masondo. "The average collection rate for the six months January to June was 95,4 percent. The average for the three months (April to June 2005) was 99,2 percent. The collection rate for June 2005 alone was 107,5 percent," he said. "We are confident that the combination of the City's credit control programme, the campaign to increase awareness of the obligations of residents to pay for the services they receive and the overall improvement in the efficiency of our systems to resolve queries and issue more accurate bills is successful," Masondo added. The improvement in revenue collection will be complemented by several programmes the City plans to implement. Programme Phakama, a restructuring of the revenue function, will see a single revenue management value chain being established. "A single customer interface value chain and a single information technology application to support both the revenue management and customer interface value chains will also be implemented. A new revenue organisation will consequently be built," said Roland Hunter, CEO in the City's revenue department. The City is working closely with national government to find solutions to the revenue and billing challenges through Project Consolidate. Approved in April 2005 by the council, the project aims to address specifically the area of opening and closing of accounts by customers. Turning to billing queries, Masondo said the City had also recorded a steady decrease in the number of billing queries raised by the City's revenue department. In 2004, the City had almost 50 000 outstanding queries recorded in the department's system. "We faced almost 30 000 new queries every month. We also had a significant number of queries older than three months recorded in our system," said Masondo. A review of the statistics done in June this year revealed that the number of new billing service requests and queries per month had declined from 29 055 in September 2004 to 6 881 in June 2005. The review indicated that the total number of service requests and queries outstanding has declined from 49 975 in June 2004 to 11 497 in June 2005. "There has also been a reduction in the number of queries older than three months from 27 867 in September 2004 to 6 252 in June 2005. The figure as at 22 July 2005 was 4 244. It is important to note that these levels represent less than one percent of the total number of accounts issued every month," Masondo said. On the City's campaign to write-off monies owed by the City's poor, Masondo said the City had managed to register 64 901 people living in Soweto, Eldorado Park, Ennerdale and Lenasia for the Municipal Services subsidy. The amount written-off so far was R920,2-million, according to Masondo. Permission to use web site material Publishers may use material from this site free of charge, as long as: Credit is given to either the "City of Johannesburg website (www.joburg.org.za)" or to "Johannesburg News Agency (www.joburg.org.za)"; If the article is used online, a link is provided to the original article on this website; The name of the article's author is acknowledged; The webmaster is informed of how and where the material is used (fill in this brief online form). Johannesburg News Agency is operated by BIG Media at 011-484-1400 Print this Page E-mail this article to a friend Help using Joburg.org.za