Career focus: You need patience to be a ward councillor

You have to be patient with people, to be a ward councillor, because not everyone is grateful for what you are doing.

Ramesh Sheodin, ward councillor in Ekurhuleni ward 72, spoke about the career choice of a ward councillor.

He said anyone considering becoming a ward councillor must know that you will be serving the community. It is a part-time job where you have to be available 24 hours a day, seven days week.

You will have to attend many community meetings like the community policing forums and also have a ward committee meeting, made up of people from the community you are serving.

He explained there were three tiers in government, namely national (parliament), provincial (Gauteng legislature) and local (Ekurhuleni Metro Municipality).

A ward councillor is elected for a five-year term and unless you are the mayor, speaker, chief whip or member of the mayoral committee or official, you are regarded as a part-time employee of the council where you are serving.

Being a ward councillor is the hardest work, as the ward councillor is the closest to the people.

Besides the community meetings he has to attend, the councillor also has to be a member of a portfolio in the metro.

Sheodin is member of the finance portfolio. For this portfolio he has to attend meetings on the metro’s finances, has to report to the party he belongs to and attend the party’s caucus meetings.

On top if this, the councillor also has to make time to fulfil party duties like canvassing and building the image of the party.

He said ward councillors should be held accountable on what was happening in their wards, as they were voted to represent the people of that ward.

The wards councillors represent in the metro are huge and Sheodin questioned how it was possible to engage with 25 000 or more residents and still do the extra and varied tasks expected of them.

He said a ward was so vast that it was impossible to know about everything that was going on in every corner and to be aware of every pothole, streetlight or sewerage or water problem. “A ward councillor is not a seer”.

He gave examples of what people expected of a councillor, such as when a resident of Springs asked him if he knew where his father was buried in 1942.

Another resident asked him if he could get the metro to clean up the mess the birds were making on his roof.

Sheodin, more times than he could remember, was requested after midnight on a weekend to attend to a shooting scene in an informal settlement.

“We are expected to be on a 24-hour stand-by for any emergencies like burglaries, motor car accidents, unrest and more.

“We are expected to return every ‘please call me’ or missed calls, respond to every email on any issue, check out our facebook pages, watsapps, bbms, SMSs and other social sites.

“Very seldom do the complainants bother to call us by our names, never mind councillor,” Sheodin said.

He said the municipality was the first port of call except in an emergency or after hours. “When there is no positive result, the councillor should then be called.”