City launches "Know Your Community, Know Your Contractor" campaign

Mayor De Lille today launched a campaign aimed at informing communities about their rights and obligations with regards to City services. Read more below:

The City of Cape Town, as part of our efforts to build a Caring City that is responsive to the needs of the people who live here, is committed to empowering our citizens.

We do this by providing all possible channels of communication between the City and residents, wherever they live in the city, so that they can assist us to improve levels of service delivery.

The City has an extensive array of mechanisms to report faults and problems. We have installed 70 FreeCall lines in disadvantaged communities, including informal settlements. In addition to this, another 20 FreeCall lines are set to be connected by the end of July 2014.

Despite this roll-out, our C3 system (customer complaint system) indicates that a number of communities, particularly in poorer areas around the city, have not been making full use of the available mechanisms.

In order to help overcome this, and to help us with service delivery in these communities, I will, starting today, lead a "Know your Community, Know Your Contractor" campaign.

This campaign is aimed at informing communities living in informal settlements about their rights and obligations related to the City services they receive.

Like all metros in South Africa, the City of Cape Town makes use of contractors, where required, to help us provide basic services. This is particularly so with regards to the provision of sanitation and solid waste services.

The City has extensive monitoring systems in place. These include:

• spot checks;
• joint inspections between the City and the relevant contractor;
• record-checking;
• information-sharing meetings;
• the use of community workers to assist with further monitoring of service provision;
• the use of janitors under the Expanded Public Works Programme to assist with further monitoring;
• cross-checking of invoices;
• verification of City vehicles' movements using tracker records;
• monitoring and measuring of waste drop-offs at designated central points - this allows us to verify that the necessary work has been undertaken in a specific area.

However, we cannot be in all places at all times. We rely on communities being the eyes and ears of the City, helping us to identify any shortcomings on behalf of the community.

As part of this campaign, I will be holding eight public meetings in the coming weeks. The details of the public meetings are as follows: 

At these meetings I will provide communities with information about:

• How to identify the City's contractors who provide Water and Sanitation and Solid Waste Management services;
• What kinds of services are provided by these contractors on behalf of the City;
• What levels of service the community can help to monitor;
• Where and how to report service delivery-related complaints.

A critical aspect of this campaign is to remind communities that, if they have exhausted all communication channels of the City, they must make use of their local Ward Councillor to address any aspects of delivery that require attention.

Whilst it is the City's responsibility to provide essential services and to monitor the contractors that provide these services, it is the responsibility of the community to help us keep their neighbourhoods clean and in a fit and healthy state.

This means that community members need to report acts of vandalism, which has cost the City a total of R13 958 252,49 for water and sanitation infrastructure for this financial year alone.

I am confident that by working together with communities and by these communities using the channels available to them to report any instances of sub-standard service, we will be able to ensure a higher level of service delivery in informal settlements.

Statement issued by Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Alderman Patricia de Lille, May 28 2013

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