Region A is getting to the root of issues in the community by taking their forum meetings to the streets – one ward at a time.
At regular forum meetings, operations are discussed and capital expenditure projects are presented. Now, ward councillors submit a list of urgent issues to the City and the regional director, and together with a team of various departments and municipal entities, physically visit the sites of issues and agree on a solution on the spot.
Region A director Abigail Ndlovu and representatives of various government entities visited Ward 132 on November 9 along with councillor Annette Deppe. Deppe could not wait to highlight all the problems residents have been bringing to her attention.
They conducted an oversite visit at Norfolk Road and Harry Galaun Drive’s uncontrolled intersection and at Halfway Gardens’ Kaufman Road where two front-end loaders needed to be removed. Other visits included ongoing Joburg Water pipe projects, route traffic problems and Halfway House Primary School’s traffic congestion.
Deppe noted the importance of these visits in addressing long-outstanding issues that needed to be addressed on-site. “I am hoping in the next financial budget we might get more capital budget to look at the bigger issues. Of course, this has to happen with the residents coming to the Community Based Planning meetings and making submissions of what they would like to see change,” Deppe added.
Ndlovu said service delivery was based on a budget and with ‘more budget and more brains on the ground, the City would definitely deliver’. “You can have a budget only to find that on the ground what we are doing is superficial and it becomes a wasteful expenditure, then we have to come back again and redo what was supposed to be done correctly long ago. We are trying now to put permanency and come up with sustainability on each and every item or job that has been raised as a concern from the residents because at the end of the day taxpayers should remain happy,” Ndlovu concluded.
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Region A’s regional director Abigail Ndlovu apologises for poor service in Midrand
