In recent weeks and months there has been an outcry from many residents about the state our suburbs in the South of Johannesburg (and elsewhere).
The implication and indeed often comments made by residents to councillors is that we are not doing our job. To those residents, may I, Clr Dennis Jane as the whip for the Democratic Alliance councillors in the south refute these allegations absolutely.
For those residents who are not aware, the process of reporting problems is to phone the call centre 011 375 555 or 0860 JOBURG (56 2874), report the pothole, long grass, piles of rubbish, leaking meter etc that has been seen. The call centre will then provide the caller with a reference number. If the reported problem is not fixed in a reasonable time, then it can be escalated to the ward councillor. We do not wait for residents to contact us; many of the problems we observe are reported without residents contacting us.
Hopefully readers will find the information contained in the table interesting and it should go a long way to support my claim that it is not councillors who are not doing their job, but rather council departments and municipal owned entities (ME’s) that fail to live up to Executive Mayor Parks Tau’s claim of Johannesburg being a World Class African City.
The table reflects the status of calls (complaints) dealt with by the various ME’s for the second quarter, i.e. October to December 2013. The statistics are for work done in Region F (parts of the inner city going south to suburbs north of Swartkoppies Road) and indicates that 66 per cent of reported complaints in the quarter have not been resolved. So, it’s the City’s ‘employees’ that have failed the residents, not the councillors.
Compiled by Ward 56 Clr Dennis Jane
