The eThekwini Municipality is enhancing utility billing with online services. Picture: Willem Phungula
The eThekwini Municipality Revenue Management Unit (RMU) intends to go on an aggressive campaign to register more customers to its e-Services platform.
The collapse in the South African postal services in most communities has led to delays in eThekwini residents receiving their monthly utility bills on time. This has led to some residents falling into arrears with their accounts because they claimed that they were not receiving their bills.
The RMU eThekwini Accounts Management Department is also in the process of doing away with manual posting by the end of June 2025, subject to Council approval.
With the introduction of online e-Services platform where customers register to view, download, and pay for their customer bills, the RMU has seen a reduction in the number of manually posted bills.
In a report presented to eThekwini Full Council, the municipality stated that it had 924 585 active customer accounts as of the end of October 2024. The RMU is currently still posting through the South African Post Office 517 188 of the total number. The municipality has 407 397 customers registered on e-Services.
The municipality stated that account management has commenced a region-by-region project to identify all customers not on e-Services. Those that have email addresses as contacts are immediately registered on e-Services.
The municipality is also sending customers SMSes requesting them to provide email addresses to be onboard with the online platform.
Also the eThekwini Call Centre and Correspondence Department is responsible for handling inbound calls from customers, enquiring about their accounts, among other things, billing related queries, payment of accounts and responding to enquiries received from customers through E-Correspondence System.
E-Correspondence System manages all written correspondences, including emails, letters, official documents, ensuring timely and professional communication with customers.
The call centre has received a total of 37 505 calls in October 2024. Of these, 21 345 enquiries were account balance enquiry and copy bill request and 16 160 general account queries. With regard to e-correspondence query types, the municipality staff dealt with a total of 3 023 queries.
The council noted that municipalities are empowered to ensure the billing systems are accurate, send out accounts to residents and follow-up to collect revenues owed.
The council also added that consideration should be given to increasing the installation of Wi-Fi infrastructure at the ward level to enable residents to log complaints online easily, thereby reducing the volume of phone calls for the municipal call centres or a need for a physical visit to the Sizakala Centres.
zainul.dawood@inl.co.za