POLOKWANE – Better lighting can help to reduce crime in the city. With this in mind the Polokwane DA has created an online form where residents can report faulty or broken streetlights in their area.
According to DA councillor Jacques Joubert, with the current backlog on streetlight maintenance within the Polokwane municipal area the DA thought it right to create the online complaint form.
“With the current backlog on streetlight maintenance and getting individual complaints from residents, we thought of a complaint platform in order to accelerate the repair of faulty streetlights that has already been reported to the municipality by residents.
He added that once a complainant has clicked on the link, and completed the required fields, all information will be stored on a spreadsheet. “The information will be consolidated and forwarded to the managers and director at the electrical department of the Polokwane Municipality.”
Joubert says this will give the department a broad idea of problem areas and the DA can use it as a tool to escalate complaints.
“With the municipality having recently procured a number of cherry picker trucks to address the backlog it is now an opportune time to escalate the problems of faulty streetlights. Many areas are unsafe when there is no public lighting and the recent statistics released by the police minister confirms this.
“As the DA we hope that the department can now adequately address the problem with the necessary speed it deserves.”
The DA will continue to do our oversight roll as councillors and put pressure on the department as and when it is needed.
The cut-off date for this round of submissions is Sunday (August 29) and Joubert says the consolidated list will be submitted to the department on Monday (August 30).
Residents can access the form by clicking HERE
