BROKE AND BROKEN: Telecoms crisis continues to paralyse Joburg — with no solution in sight until end-August

The City of Johannesburg has acknowledged owing Telkom R4.8 million in outstanding invoices, but refutes claims that the citywide telecommunications and server blackout is due to financial distress. Citizens are left without mobile and telecommunications services until the end of August. The city claims the unpaid R4.8-million Telkom bill resulted from a routine financial year-end shutdown on June 30, which paused payment processing while invoices accumulated for the new fiscal year.

Full service restoration is expected at the end of August, as officials switch to another service provider under the Treasury's RT15 framework.

On Tuesday, the city experienced a further breakdown with central server failures and a complete blackout of the main municipal website, www.joburg.org.za. This outage prevented residents from accessing billing and account portals citywide, leading to hundreds of rate-paying citizens being turned away at customer service centers across all seven regions, including the city's main revenue center in Braamfontein.

The city defended its decision by stating that it discontinued Telkom landline services on September 13, 2023, upon vacating the damaged Metro Centre in Braamfontein to avoid "fruitless expenditure" on idle infrastructure. The city claimed this move allowed call centers and critical services to remain fully functional under the new platform. However, this contradicts the reality for residents, as council statements, press releases, and public directories still direct them to the same 011 407 numbers.

The combination of server failures, inaccessible website, unserviced walk-in centers, and dead phone lines has left residents entirely cut off from municipal management, making it difficult to resolve account queries and escalate service delivery breakdowns. A resident attempting to apply for a senior citizen's rates rebate at Thuso House on Tuesday discovered that the system had been down since the previous week, forcing staff to direct them to an email address and instructing them not to return until they received confirmation that the system was online again.

The city acknowledges that the telecommunications debt, including fixed lines, mobile, and data, may be higher than the admitted figures due to months of unpaid bills. Telkom declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. Call centers are struggling with long wait times, and the city has apologized to frustrated ratepayers.

Residents can no longer access essential online services such as e-Joburg statements and accounts, property transfers and rates clearance, building plans and spatial planning, valuation roll queries, fault logging and service alerts, and tenders and media releases. Residents are advised to use specific operational channels for assistance, including the functional emergency dispatch line at 011 375 5911.