Municipality strives for shorter turn-around
Improved turnaround time and better service delivery. With this goal in mind, the Modimolle-Mookgophong Municipality has established what they aptly call a “war room”, where they meet daily to ensure officials stay on top of attending to complaints and crises situations that may occur.
According to the mayor, Sechele Sebolai, the war room was established in November.
“We identified water, sewer, roads and other critical service delivery issues as crisis areas and planned how we will deal with them. The war room team gets together every day at 19:00, even during the past festive season, where they need to give feedback to me and to the municipal manager,” Sebolai said.
“The meeting is attended by the directors and division managers for technical services, social services, customer care and artisans. The supply chain manager and the Chief Financial Officer also attend so that they understand the urgency when we request funds to attend to problems,” he explained.
“We want to change the culture of how things are done. We are planning a trial period of three months to see if this method is effective and then it must become the norm to ensure better services.”
During the meeting, the mayor and municipal manager, Ben Thobela, received reports of complaints received by customer care during the working day, with their reference numbers, and they could determine how the issues were resolved. They insist on a positive outcome for each issue by the following day.
“On minor issues such as pipe bursts, faulty electricity meters and blocked sewage, our turnaround time has been about eight hours. We want to improve on this. Our plan is effective as we already received fewer complaints and see residents’ positive reactions on social media.”
Thobela agrees that the war room is bearing fruit.
“We do not allow any excuses for issues that aren’t resolved quickly. My advantage is that I come from a technical background and know when I’m not being told the truth regarding solving maintenance issues.” Thobela is a qualified civil engineer.
Another positive glimmer on the horizon for the municipality is the possibility of increased funds for the upgrade of reticulation services.
“We are currently the best-performing municipality in the province for spending our Water Services Infrastructure Grant (WSIG) wisely. This led to the national treasury considering giving us additional money to replace our municipality’s old asbestos pipes which often causes problems,” he said.
