THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has teamed up with the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) Company to enable citizens to pay their rates and taxes from their mobile phones using ‘Mobile Money.’

While the telephone company is bent on popularising ‘Mobile Money’ to persuade its customers to sign up for it, the M&CC wants to ensure that the municipality is offering every option available for payments to be made, owing to its current financial crisis.  As of yesterday, rate payers could have begun accessing the service at a fee of $100 of which M&CC undertook to cover half.

Thus, only $50 will be charged to customers. In the event M&CC falls short of paying over this amount to GT&T, this does not mean that customers’ payments will not go through.  GT&T’s Vice President/Retail Officer, Ms. Tracy Smith, offered that the system is “very secure” and is operational with a pin number that the customer can change as many times as he wishes.  At a simple ceremony at City Hall on Tuesday, Smith described the system as a “safe, secure and paperless” method of payment.

While a text message is sent to the customer’s phone as a receipt for the transaction, Information Technology head, Adunni Christian offered that customers can also pick up hard copy receipts of their transactions from M&CC if they prefer.

‘Mobile Money’ Specialist, Kester Abrams informed that customers can sign up online or at any GT&T office with an Identification Card and Proof of Address and can pick up their ‘Mobile Money’ from any of the more than 140 agents around the city.

Currently, only rate payers in Georgetown can benefit from this system, but Smith did say that the telephone company is working assiduously to have it extended outside of Georgetown to the various Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDC), and so forth.

Deputy Town Clerk, Sharon Harry-Munroe said the M&CC envisions that this service will in future assist the municipality in garnering not only taxes, but payments for other services that the municipality provides.  Public Relations Officer (PRO), Debra Lewis said the project is the brainchild of Christian who has been working diligently for quite some time now to make it a reality.

She added that the council wants to make life easier for citizens who have to endure long lines and other inconveniences to get their taxes paid.