adminMore than 12 000 Bulawayo residents have not paid council water bills since dollarisation in 2009 despite council’s massive water disconnections and prosecution of defaulters.
The call centre has been a hit with residents and since it started operating on 3 August, it has received about 9 000 calls.
Council is working on capitalising on this huge popularity to reach an understanding with residents, as it battles to recover about $90,3 million from debtors and pay $69,2 million it also owes its service providers and other creditors.
In an interview yesterday, the city’s senior public relations officer, Mrs Nesisa Mpofu said the centre was among the council’s greatest investments as its benefits were immense.
“Ratepayers are the main source of revenue for the BCC and therefore, their satisfaction is of paramount importance as it will have a massive implication on the revenue collection rate.
“The slackness of the municipality’s response to customer queries has been of great concern over the years and therefore, the advent of the call centre should bring about change,” said Mrs Mpofu.
She said residents could request emergency services like fire and ambulance, report burst pipes and sewers, make queries on their bills and give feedback to the local authority through the call centre.
Mrs Mpofu said the formation of mutually beneficial partnerships with organisations and twinning arrangements with cities in other countries had resulted in increased benefits that had allowed council to improve service delivery in some areas, despite residents’ unwillingness to pay.
Addressing scores of stakeholders who attended the launch, the Mayor Councillor Thaba Moyo said the development of the call centre had led to improved customer service, adding that increased customer satisfaction was likely to translate to increased revenue collection.
He said residents started using the call centre even before the toll free numbers, 0800 4700 and 0808 4700 were publicly announced on Monday.
“As at Friday 2 November, the call centre had received 3 400 calls in water and sanitation and the average calls on the subject hover around 50 per day.
“In the emergency section, 5 290 ambulance calls have been received to date, averaging 90 calls per day. Eighty eight fire calls have been received to date and there have been 50 special calls,” said Clr Moyo.
He said action was pending on only 45 of the water and sanitation calls as the local authority continued to work on improving response time and disseminating information to residents.
The technological wonder, which is the first of its kind in the country, is an automated system that can receive and manage many phone calls at the same time.
It can screen calls, forward them to people qualified to handle them, and log call details.
The call centre is expected to help build trust between the local authority and residents by increasing interface and interaction between the two.
The call centre has been established with the support of the Bulawayo Water and Sanitation Emergency Response (Bowser) project and UN Habitat.
Bowser is a project funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAid) and implemented by three partners, namely Bulawayo City Council, Dabane Trust and World Vision Zimbabwe.
Bowser is benefiting around 45 000 Bulawayo residents and has led to significant improvements to the city’s water and sanitation systems through rehabilitation of sewer lines.
Australia has provided a total of $9,1 million to Bowser to date, with an additional $1 million coming from World Vision.
Other partners in the call centre project include the European Union, the Swedish Development Aid (Sida) and EThekwini Municipality from Durban in South Africa.
Online Reporter