By Ling Hui
KUCHING, Feb 18: Up to 60 per cent out of about 50,000 assessment rate bills under the Kuching South City Council (MBKS) are being paid online, says its mayor Dato Wee Hong Seng.
He said the assessment rate eBilling (electronic billing) services started in 2018, and some ratepayers still have not registered to the digital service.
Despite so, he said, the council does not intend to force its assessment ratepayers into eBilling anytime soon.
He emphasised that a portion of the ratepayers are elderly people, and some of them do not even have access to smartphones.
”We don’t want to fix the date (for eBilling full implementation) or force the idea on the people because, as you can all see, most of those who come to MBKS counters to pay their assessment rate bills are the elderly.
“Of course, we want to digitalise our services as soon as possible, but we want to approach it slowly, get people to go online slowly.
”We can slowly educate the people, and if the remaining ones still can’t do it or do not have (Internet) access, then we figure out some ways to resolve it,” said Wee during his weekly ShallWEETalk live session today.
Adding on, he said once all the council’s services are fully digitalised, only then would MBKS consider cutting down physical counters. — DayakDaily
