Silvano Borien writes by email:
Could you kindly address the fact that government buildings such as municipal offices and licensing departments are being closed at 12:00 on a Wednesday for fumigation?
Why can’t this be done after hours?
Government departments are already not the most efficient departments, with staff who do not care about customer service, as well as being poorly trained.
Why should these departments only work a half-day on a Wednesday? This just adds to bottlenecks on other days.
I was employed at a bank and fumigation was only done over weekends, thus not impacting day-to-day operations. I have encountered this more than once and am absolutely disgruntled.
Editor’s note: Comment was requested from the City of Ekurhuleni and the following response was received from spokesperson Zweli Dlamini:
“The facilities in Brakpan CCA (Customer Care Area) are scheduled for fumigation every Wednesday. We have made arrangements for our facilities to be fumigated for Covid-19 purposes in the afternoons to avoid losing the whole day of service hence the arrangements from midday to the afternoon,” he said.
“The Licensing Department is fumigated at 12:00 and the Brakpan Civic Centre arranged for their facility to be fumigated from 13:30.
“The employees and customers should not be inside the premises during the fumigation process.
“The fumigation team is working on a voluntary basis due to budgetary constraints and these teams are unable to work on weekends as most of our facilities are closed then.
“The fumigators are servicing multiple facilities across the City and arrangements are made taking into consideration other facilities in other regions.”
