ETHEKWINI Municipality has confirmed that since lockdown it has received a higher than usual number of complaints from customers that they have not acquired reference numbers for complaints lodged and the department was struggling to keep up withthe number of complaints and queries.
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This was in reply to questions by councillors who said they had been on the receiving end of complaints from residents saying they were not getting reference numbers, or having their complaints attended to timeously.
“A reference number is issued immediately when a resident lodges an official complaint, whether the complaint is submitted via WhatsApp, telephone or email. However, this has not been the case in many instances in the past few weeks,” said DA councillor Mzamo Billy, adding that this had resulted in complaints regarding water leaks and outages not being attended to for days and in some cases, weeks. From the response, it is evident that the municipality is simply not keeping pace with the number of complaints it is receiving during this vital period,” he said.
As a result, the DA has now appealed to the municipality to urgently prioritise water related queries, enhance resources and provide maximum support to the teams working on bringing water to the people.
“We have since proposed to the department to consider seconding staff that may not necessarily be considered essential during lockdown to assist the department with complaints. The inability to timeously attend to water-related complaints such as outages and leaks could negatively compromise efforts to deal with Covid-19. The municipality must take drastic steps to ensure that the provision of water to all residents of this city is steady,” said Billy.
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