One of the many things the news team often is asked is whether they have a direct number one can phone to get through to the Mogale City Municipality.
Unfortunately not.
After making a few phone calls themselves, the news team now also shares the residents’ frustrations with the council staff not answering their own telephones.
On the council’s website (www.mogalecity.gov.za), you will find a list of numbers to be used in case of an emergency. The most prominent number is the 107 emergency number.
Shortly after 8am on a Monday morning, news editor Janine Viljoen called 107 from her office land line. No one answered. A few minutes later she tried again, this time using her cellphone, and heard the surprising message that “the number you have dialled does not exist”. She tried phoning again, using someone else’s cellphone and again she heard the same message. She then asked someone else to try it on their cellphone and again, the same message was heard.
The second emergency number listed, 086 166 4253, was answered quickly by someone who sounded relatively competent. When Viljoen asked why no one answered the 107 call she neither was given a satisfactory reason, nor did the person seem to know what the purpose of the 107 number actually was. However she did refer Viljoen to a Tebogo on 011 951 2157.
Viljoen asked Tebogo about the emergency number and she confirmed that it was for the police, ambulance service, fire brigade and for general municipal issues such as water and electricity. When it was mentioned to her that no one answered their phone and that the number cannot be reached from a cellphone, her answer was that she did not know why because the number is actually a district emergency number and not a municipal one. She neither offered to log a query to the district nor did she sound very interested in finding out why no one answers this number.
After the exercise, which took about an hour, Viljoen tried to phone the other numbers listed but none of them were answered at all.
The only conclusion is that residents genuinely are struggling to get through to the municipality and that emergencies will need to be dealt with through another, probably more lengthy process.
