Ekurhuleni residents will soon be able to walk into major malls around the city and pay for their municipal services while doing their shopping.

The City of Ekurhuleni is revving up its revenue enhancement drive and will soon introduce payment kiosks at local malls and OR Tambo International Airport, where residents and travelers will able to view and pay their municipal accounts.   

According to the City’s CFO, Ramasela Ganda, the first batch of 22 kiosks have been procured and will be distributed to malls once internal processes have been completed.

“We want to include the payment of municipal services [in the shopping experience] by introducing a more convenient and modern way to do so. We want to turn our malls into one-stop shops where one can do groceries and even pay for services,” she said.

The kiosks will allow residents to pay with cash or their debit and credit cards. In future, the kiosks will be enabled to provide airtime, allow for the payment of traffic fines and cemetery fees, as well as applying for municipal services.

Ramasela said the City of Ekurhuleni has an obligation to make payment of services convenient and easy, while residents have an obligation to pay for their services.

This revenue enhancement drive is an addition to the City’s reliable and quick online platform to view and pay for municipal accounts. A simple click on www.e-siyakhokha.co.za has in the past three years opened up a world of convenience for residents and business owners alike.

Member of Mayoral Committee for Finance, Moses Makwakwa, said the platform brings to an end an era of erroneous cut-offs.

“The service provides confirmation of payments and matches the payment to the statement, thus ensuring that payments are correctly reflected against one’s account.  Erroneous cut-offs due to incorrect referencing or delays in receiving payment are therefore almost completely eliminated,” he said.

This, he added, will reduce the queues in rates offices as it also allows ratepayers to obtain a history of all their statements and payments at the click of a button, lodge queries and disputes and print or email statements for proof of address.                                

“We expect our service levels to improve even further as the number of queries and walk-in customers reduce the load on staff in both our finance offices and call centre,” he said.

Makwakwa said ratepayers, who bank with either Standard Bank or Nedbank, are already able to benefit from this enhanced service by simply adding Ekurhuleni as a bill within MyBills on Standard Bank internet banking and MyeBills within Nedbank internet or mobile banking.

“Ratepayers are encouraged to make use of this new and innovative system, which will also soon be available from ABSA and thereafter, other participating institutions,” Makwakwa said