A dummy’s guide to resolving service delivery issues

Although councillors are available to assist residents with municipal issues that they are struggling to get resolved through official city channels, it is important to note that the local councillor should not be the first to contact when trying to report an issue occurring in the City of Johannesburg.

Residents first need to contact the City directly and use official contact channels to log their complaint. Only when the City fails to resolve the issue in a timeous manner the local councillor should be contacted to see what he/she can do to assist.

The following process should be followed.

1. Log your query with the City of Johannesburg.

This can be done by

• calling Joburg Connect on 0860 JOBURG or 0860 562 874.

• emailing Joburg Connect at joburgconnect@joburg.org.za

• faxing the query to 011 358 3408/ 09

• going through to the local Municipal Walk-in Centre (Christiaan de Wet Road, Florida Park)

Please consider the following when doing this:

Queries sent to the fax line and the Joburg Connect email address only will be answered in a haphazard manner, and whilst many queries get answered in a reasonable time frame, many do not get answered at all. Whatever method is chosen will require a measure of patience. If you have chosen to call Joburg Connect it can take anything from a few seconds to over half an hour to answer and it may require a person to call back a few times if the call gets cut off. If a resident go into a walk-in centre, it can take some time before staff can see them to deal with the issue. It is also of utmost importance to remember to get an official City reference number and record it and the date of receipt. This is vital for use when following up on the issue.

2. Give the City a reasonable amount of time to resolve the problem.

It will take the City some time to get to the issue. For potholes it can be a few days. For water bursts it should be within 24 hours. A resident who have logged an issue should give the City administration time to respond to the issue before escalating it to the councillor, remembering that at the moment due to staffing shortages and problems relating to the poor financial situation of the City, service delivery is delayed and takes longer than may be desired.

As with any rule there are exceptions. Certain issues are very urgent and need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. In the case of an urgent issue, as soon as it has been reported to the City and the official reference number has been issued, the resident should contact the relevant councillor.

However, it must be considered carefully whether an issue is actually urgent. Urgent issues are those that require immediate attention such as burst sewage and water lines. A pothole, no matter how large, is not an urgent issue and neither is a long battle with the billing department. When residents immediately raise non-urgent matters, councillors are required to ask them to give the City time to deal with it before they can escalate it. Furthermore it takes away from the time councillors have to deal with the many urgent issues that councillors do need to deal with on a frequent basis.

3. Contact the councillor.

Once a resident has an official reference number from the City and waited a reasonable amount of time for the City to deal with the issue, it is time to contact the councillor.

It is important to make sure that the official reference number is on hand (with the date of receipt) as this will be needed before an issue can be escalated.

Please determine which councillor needs to be contacted as councillors from other wards will not be able to assist.