Response to SJC grandstanding
The City of Cape Town is committed to providing all of our residents with the best sanitation services we are able to.
According to the Census and figures provided by national government, the City provides the best level of sanitation services in the country. This is despite the fact that the population of Cape Town grew by close to 30% in the last ten years.
To further improve services, we introduced the provision of janitorial services to enhance the maintenance of toilet services in informal settlements.
Today's publicity stunt by the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) in which they make demands on the City with regards to the janitorial service, smacks of grandstanding and brings into question their motives and understanding of the initiative.
Over the past few months, the SJC has demanded all manner of documents regarding sanitation and solid waste services from the City of Cape Town. As part of our commitment to openness and transparency we duly provided these. We have done so despite the collation of the documents taking our officials away from the important work of actually implementing the service.
Now that they have the documents, it has become clear that they either have not read them, or have refused to let the facts get in the way of their desire to grandstand.
It is also noteworthy that my office has made two appointments available to the SJC for 8 and 17 October. They have as yet not agreed to this offer for a constructive engagement. This comes on the back of a number of previous engagements with the SJC over the last two years, again done so in a spirit of cooperation.
This makes a mockery of the claims of a lack of engagement by the City.
In this financial year, janitorial services together with backyarders will receive R29 million in terms of operational expenditure and just over R57 million in water and solid waste services.
This allocation will continue to rise over the Medium-Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework and is indicative of our continuous commitment to deliver on our electoral mandate and to improve the quality of life of a substantive section of our population.
If the SJC had sincere concerns about the roll-out of this programme, they should have immediately reported these through the numerous channels the City has available to do so, so that they could be instantly rectified.
The fact that they chose not to do so and instead resorted to an illegal demonstration again proves they are more interested in publicity than they are in genuinely trying to improve service provision.
Statement issued by Patricia de Lille, Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town, September 11 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
