Public Protector meets City of Joburg Mayor on billing and redressing service delivery failure in Braamfischerville

Public Protector Adv Thuli Madonsela and Executive Mayor of the City of Joburg (COJ) Cllr Parks Tau met in Pretoria to review progress made since the last meeting held on 14 April 2011 to discuss billing problems in the COJ. The meeting also sought to review progress made towards resolving the sewage and water seepage challenges in Braamfischerville township.
 
The delegation of the Mayor included Mr Gerald Dumas the COO and other senior managers in the COJ as well as senior managers from the Department of Local Government and Housing in Gauteng.
 
Speaking at the meeting the Public Protector said she was satisfied with the progress and particularly encouraged by the delivery on undertakings made in April 2011 and more recently on the Braamfischerville sewage and water seepage problem.
 
The Public Protector noted with gratitude progress made on:
 
  1. Stabilising the billing system and related technical problems
  2. Addressing data accuracy problems
  3. Measures being taken to ensure a swifter, fairer and more transparent internal process for resolving billing disputes, which include reduced turnaround times for disputed bills
  4. Improving communication with each resident and keeping the broader community of efforts underpinned by a vision to improve the quality of customer experience
  5. Development of a draft Customer Service Charter with a view to finalising it by 31July 2012
  6. Adjudicating the specific cases referred by the Public Protector and reducing the number of unresolved complaints from 453 to 175.
 
She also noted progress made in resolving the challenges at Braamfischerville where specific interventions were made including:
 
  •  Emergency interventions to correct the sewage spillage
  •  Conducting an audit of the system and water seepage problem to identify causal factors
  • Attending to garbage collection
  • Cooperate with Eskom to attend to power outages
  • To undertake to develop a comprehensive Service Delivery Program to collaborate with other role players at provincial level
  • Create a service delivery forum that seeks to keep residents updated with the process and use lessons learnt from Braamfischerville for the resplve of other township problems.
 
At the end of the meeting it was agreed that the COJ will provide a revised report that quantifies the progress made indicating the percentage of progress made on each of the above, the percentage of work still to be done and the time lines on which the remedial action will be completed by Friday, 20 July 2012.
 
The MEC’s office undertook to provide by Friday, 13 July 2012 an indication of when the documents on the environmental study, geo-technical report and the original tender documents will be made available to the task team involved in the matter.
 
The Public Protector and the Mayor also agreed to report back to the community of Braamfischerville on a date to be agreed.
 
Issued by:
 
Kgalalelo Masibi 
Spokesperson for the Public Protector
Tel: (012) 366 7006
Cell: 079 507 0399
Published Date: 
Wednesday, July 11, 2012