City probes fault in service App
A Waterfall resident had contacted the Highway Mail to complain about an unresolved service delivery issue which had been lodged on the App a month prior.
THE eThekwini Municipality said that it is investigating an error on its mobile App which resulted in a delay in resolving a resident’s complaint.
The municipality’s spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said the “root cause of this error” is being probed “to prevent a recurrence”.
This follows Waterfall resident Anthony Drimmie’s complaint about non-functional or broken streetlights on his road which he lodged on June 25 via the municipality’s mobile App.
Just over a month later, nothing had been done about the streetlights, which prompted a frustrated Drimmie to contact the Highway Mail.
Drimmie said four streetlights on the road they reside on were broken and that after lodging the complaint on the App, he received a reference number and a two to 24 hours time frame to rectify the issue.
Also read: Councillor urges residents to report broken streetlights
Sisilana said the municipality “extends its sincere apologies to” Drimmie and added that an unfortunate “technical system error” resulted with this resident’s reference number being “incorrectly linked in our database to a different street”.
“This meant that the customer’s fault report was not flagged for action in the correct location, resulting in a delay in service. A technician has now been dispatched to carry out the necessary repairs. We are investigating the root cause of this error to prevent a recurrence. We would like to assure residents that this should not discourage them from using the city’s updated mobile App and other available platforms to report faults,” said Sisilana.
On Tuesday, Drimmie confirmed that technicians had begun working on the streetlights and thanked the Highway Mail for its intervention.
Drimmie had contacted the Highway Mail in response to an article about the municipality’s PR councillor urging residents to make use of the mobile App to report service delivery issues.
He had questioned why residents should make use of the App when there was a delay with his complaint which he had lodged just over a month prior.
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