All municipal cellphones were almost blocked on Wednesday after the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality failed to pay the bill.
By the afternoon, the shutdown appeared to have been averted, with the municipality saying the issue of outstanding payment was being dealt with and that the situation was due to delays by individual departments to provide money for payment to network provider Vodacom.
Vodacom sent an SMS to all municipal cellphones on Tuesday, saying their accounts were in arrears and would be suspended within 24 hours.
Municipal officials described it as a crisis, saying that after-hour call-outs such as electricity and water departments would grind to a halt if the suspensions were effected.
Officials scrambled to get clarity on the SMS, with an email being sent to all municipal staff by acting communications director Sivenkosi Mtiya.
Mtiya said in the e-mail: “Staff members who have municipal cellphones will have received a Vodacom alert to the effect that their cellphone account is in arrears and that their Vodacom service will be blocked within 24 hours.
“This message is in fact correct – because of the nonpayment of the NMBM cellphone account, the service provider has decided to block the municipality’s account from tomorrow [Wednesday]. That means that municipal cellphone users will not be able to make or receive calls or use the SMS or WhatsApp services.
“They will also not be able to top up their accounts to continue to use their phones.
“This situation has arisen because of the failure by some departments and directorates to make the necessary money available for paying their monthly cellphone accounts, despite regular entreaties from the corporate services directorate in the regard.
“The directorate is now working with budget and treasury to establish who the defaulting departments or directorates are.
“Once the required funds have been made available, the service provider will be paid and the NMBM cellphone service restored.”
Officials from various directorates confirmed that several departments worked on an after-hours standby list, with the relevant employees alerted via cellphone to respond to any after-hours emergency.
This included the electricity and water department as well as, to a lesser degree, emergency services which worked on a standby system for supervisors and managers to be alerted to serious incidents.
“Services will be severely impacted,” an official, who asked not to be named, said.
“People need to be warned about this as it is a very serious issue.” Other officials said there was no backup protocol in place to alert staff of emergencies other than by their cellphones.
“It is a vital and critical service which allows all afterhours call-out staff, including supervisors, to be alerted via WhatsApp, SMS or a phone call.
“If this is gone ... it could be chaos,” one said.
Another official questioned how it had got to “breaking point”.
“There must have been notice given [of the overdue accounts].
“Why was it left until the last minute?” the official said.
Municipal spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki said: “It is regrettable that alarmist messages were sent to officials causing unnecessary panic.
“The issue of outstanding payment to Vodacom is being dealt with – payments have already been made to that effect.
“The delays [in payment] emanated from delays from individual departments to avail money for payment to Vodacom as funds are within individual departments.
“To avoid this situation, the municipality is working on a plan to centralise funds that are related to services of similar nature,” he said.
Vodacom spokesperson Bongo Futuse said: “Due to customer confidentiality, we are precluded from disclosing any detail on the matter.
“Suffice to say that it has been resolved amicably.”