City of Joburg phone lines down during provider switch, municipality says

The City of Johannesburg says direct mobile lines for some municipal officials are temporarily unavailable while the city moves services to a new provider.

What happened

According to The Citizen, direct phone lines of Johannesburg municipal officials will be unavailable until the city completes the transition to a new service provider.

The municipality told staff earlier this week to use personal mobile phones while state-issued phones were offline. According to The Citizen, internal messages sent to staff earlier this week requested they use their personal mobile phones while state-issued phones were offline.

Municipality statement and operational impact

The city said the disruptions are the result of a contractual migration between mobile service providers.

“Some officials’ municipal mobile line services are currently experiencing temporary disruptions as a result of the contractual transition from one mobile service provider to another.”

The municipality added that contingency measures had been activated to reduce disruption and that primary landlines and customer-facing channels including the Joburg call centre, customer service centres and emergency contact services remain operational and available to residents.

The city also pointed residents to the call centre and digital reporting platforms for faults such as water leaks, electricity outages, blocked sewers, refuse collection problems and traffic signal failures. For billing or account matters, residents were directed to the e-Joburg online platform or nearest Customer Service Centre.

Reporting on access to staff and services

Calls made by The Citizen to municipal lines went unanswered on Thursday, and the paper reported that operators were contactable on Friday morning. The Citizen described this pattern of accessibility as part of the disruption.

Political response

The Democratic Alliance said it would scrutinise the city’s contingency plans and had raised concerns about whether service providers had gone unpaid. The party criticised the administration’s financial decisions and linked them to service interruptions.

Next steps

The municipality said it was working with service providers to restore communications and that every effort was being made to complete the migration and restore all affected mobile services as soon as possible. The city promised to issue further updates if necessary.