25 February 2005 Press Release CITY RESPONDS TO MEC MAHLANGU'S COMMENTS RE SUPPORT TO BE PROVIDED TO MUNICIPALITIES IN GAUTENG The City welcomes the announcement by Gauteng Local Government MEC Qedani Mahlangu that from 1 March 2005, support in the form of Project Consolidate will be given to five municipalities, including the City of Johannesburg. We have been co-operating with the National and Provincial Government regarding Project Consolidate since the research phase began some time ago, and we appreciate the decision to provide support to the City. While the nature and extent of support has yet to be clarified, we can confirm that we have applied to the Provincial Government for financial assistance in respect of a significant project to clean up the City's customer database. We are also pleased to report that the City has made good progress in cleaning up the various issues relating to its billing programme. There has been a 41,6% drop in the number of unresolved logged queries regarding bills issued by the Department of Revenue over the past seven months or so. In July 2004, there were about 50 000 queries being handled by the Department. As of 6 February 2005, there were 29 700 queries registered in the system. ENDS Mandy Jean Woods Director: Marketing and Communications Department of Revenue City of Johannesburg Phone: 407 7356 Fax: 403 7738 Cell: 082 553 4211 (Please send sms if urgent) Email: mandyw@joburg.org.za