City of Windhoek employees accused of manipulating the municipality’s billing system have been suspended pending disciplinary proceedings.
However, the municipality told The Namibian on Friday that it will not reveal how many employees remain suspended due to the matter.
This comes after the Khomas Ratepayers and Residents Association last week demanded the release of a forensic audit into the municipality’s billing system during a meeting with the city council.
City spokesperson Harold Akwenye says disciplinary cases cannot be discussed because they are labour matters.
“The city confirms that internal disciplinary processes relating to certain employees are ongoing.
As these are labour-related matters involving individual employees, the city is legally and ethically constrained from disclosing details relating to the number of employees involved, the status of individual cases, or the outcomes of disciplinary proceedings while these processes are underway,” he says.
Akwenye says the municipality remains committed to handling the cases fairly and in line with labour laws and municipal policies.
The residents association claims some employees have remained suspended for about two years while the city continues investigating the alleged manipulation of customer accounts.
Association chairperson Shaun Gariseb has called on the municipality to release the completed forensic audit by Deloitte into the Solar BCX billing system.
“We know that the report has been finalised and submitted to the office of the chief executive officer (CEO); however, the CEO, Moses Matayayi, has not signed off on the report since last year. We also know why,” he says.
The association claims the report found that the billing problems were caused by defects in the system and not by employees.
The municipality, however, denied claims that the report has been sitting with the CEO since last year.
Akwenye says the audit was commissioned to strengthen governance, improve service delivery and protect the integrity of the city’s billing processes.
“The report has not simply been ‘sitting with the CEO’, as alleged,” he says.
He says the report is moving through the city’s governance structures before any action is taken.
Asked whether the report will be made public, Akwenye says no decision has been made regarding the report’s public release.
“As with all internal audit reports, the findings must first be considered by the relevant governance structures before any decision is made regarding public release,” he says, adding that it is too early to say whether the report will be published.
BROKEN SYSTEM
The association also questions why the municipality renewed its contract for the billing system despite knowing about alleged defects.
“The defect of the billing system was reported internally in 2015, and the head of information technology was warned and knew about the anomalies of the system, but the City of Windhoek went ahead and renewed the contract, which is costing us N$12 million annually,” Gariseb says.
He adds that residents continue to report unusually high municipal bills.
He cites one account that was billed more than N$55 000 in January and more than N$42 000 in February before returning to normal in March. Gariseb says the resident had the water meter inspected and no leak was found.
He adds that the municipality later informed the resident that the meter had reached the end of its lifespan and that a N$2 900 meter test fee had to be paid.
“Our biggest question remains how many of us have paid monies we were not supposed to pay because of this defective billing system which the City of Windhoek knew about,” Gariseb asks.
Akwenye says residents who believe they have been incorrectly billed should contact its customer care offices.
“The city has established processes to investigate billing-related queries, verify account information, and make corrections where necessary,” he says.
The City of Windhoek has faced complaints about its billing system for several years. Residents have accused the municipality of issuing incorrect water and electricity bills, disconnecting services over disputed debts and handing accounts to debt collectors.
In 2024, residents from Katutura approached the police to open a collective theft and fraud case over disputed municipal charges.
That same year, reports emerged that the municipality had been covering up problems with its billing system for more than two years. An internal memorandum by the city’s strategic executive, Fillemon Neputa, confirmed that an investigation had found customer accounts with incorrect information.
The investigation found the irregularities originated within the city’s own servers and not the Solar BCX billing software. It also found the city could not identify who changed the accounts because the system kept audit logs for only 30 days.
In June 2024, the High Court ordered the municipality to reconnect the water supply of Klein Windhoek resident Annalize Calabrese after disconnecting her services over disputed arrears of more than N$1 million.
Later that year, the Electricity Control Board directed local authorities to stop blocking prepaid electricity meters for unpaid non-electricity debts.
The city challenged the directive, arguing it conflicted with the council’s legal powers.
At the same time, then mayor Queen Kamati acknowledged that the municipality had detected billing errors through its internal control processes.
