Pretoria - Tshwane residents need not resort to violent protests to request service delivery.
Instead, they should submit their grievances to council’s Petitions Committee, which deals with the needs of the people.
To drive home this message, the deputy director for petitions and memorandums in the Office of the Speaker, Khaya Daki, yesterday led the launch of a roadshow to create awareness about the more effective way to raise and request services.
The City has acknowledged that a great majority of the public was not informed about their constitutional right to submit petitions about any issues, which gives them a tracking number and an opportunity to participate in service delivery.
Daki said they started the roadshow with the open-top bus in Soshanguve and Mabopane, educating members of the public about how a petition worked and that no issue or need was too small or too big to be brought to the attention of the office of the speaker.
This could be something as small as a couple of street portholes in the community or as big as a request for relocation or formalisation of an informal settlement.
When a petition is received, the committee starts communicating with the relevant department and the community to ensure the matter is addressed.
The team will look at the budget, and if the issue is small, they can request that the matter be resolved speedily, but if it is something requiring large sums of money, they usually request that it be placed on the budget in the next financial year.
“All the decisions that are taken in the committee are taken on behalf of the council. It is actually a final decision taken. Once a month, administrators submit these requests (petitions) in the form of reports. The councillors then meet and discuss these requests and make decisions.
“This is the simplest way of raising requests for services and to participate in the process of service delivery. That is why we are here to explain that process to the people. We are trying to make it easy for the community of Tshwane because this will assist in managing protests. The process will give them answers and time frame and tracking number of their petition,” said Daki.
He said communities often have grievances about water, electricity, potholes, uncut vegetation and settlements but often did not know they had a constitutional right to petition the City of Tshwane on all those things.
Daki said the process had always been there, and if the community was aware of it, there would not be a need for a lot of these protests taking place regularly.
He added that the office was the liaison between the community and the implementation, which was the relevant department, and their views were skewed on the side of the community to ensure people receive services.
The petitioners immediately receive a petition number for tracking and tracking and response from the office of the speaker and the relevant department within seven days.
“We are the vanguard holding the City and the service delivery departments accountable on the side of the community. After a month, we continue engaging with the petitioners.
“The total turnaround time is three months, whereby the issues should have been resolved. If it happens that the City is unable to implement because of budgetary constraints, normally, we will refer the petition to the next financial year.
“If it is a small matter that speaks of maintenance, we just ask the department to go and carry out the operational maintenance.”
Pretoria News