Service complaints logged with the City are being signed off without being completed, say councillors.
At a Sub-council 2 meeting earlier this month, councillors said a lot of the complaints on the C3 notification system showed they’d been dealt with when that wasn’t the case.
Councillors say the system is corrupt and are fed up with taking the flak from residents waiting on work to be completed.
Introduced in 2007, the C3 notification system is an electronic method for reporting and tracking general problems, including blocked drains, burst pipes, potholes and broken street lights and more.
The top-three most reported incidents for Sub-council 2 areas, which include informal settlements, are blocked drains, burst pipes and potholes.
Floris Theart, head of the City’s revenue department held a presentation on the C3 notification system and provided statistics showing that more than 10 000 incidents were reported in Sub-council 2 and more than a third of the items had been closed.
The main objective of the system, he said, was “to see the number of incidents drop and fixed, by starting with the oldest items first”.
But councillors did not agree.
Ward 102 councillor Rhynhardt Bresler called the C3 statistics “made up lies”.
He added: “I think these statistics are what your staff created, not what the public has sent because even I reported that a stop sign was driven over in Brackenfell a few months ago and when I drove past the sign on Tuesday, February 18, it was still lying on its side, but the system says it is closed and the job is done. This is a myth, and we are lying to the people.”
Mr Theart conceded there was a backlog of unattended service requests.
“This is a typical problem. The situations around service delivery complaints have not changed, unfortunately it’s just how some departments are working,” he said.
But Ward 8 councillor and Mayco member for spatial planning and environment Marian Nieuwoudt accused Mr Theart of owning up to fraud and a corrupt system.
“I don’t think that this system works for our citizens. Instead it’s a system that helps people hide behind their excuses of not finishing a job. Saying the work has been done and that it’s closed is fraud,” she said.
Councillor Simphiwe Nonkeyizana from Ward 6 agreed and said that residents were constantly on his case about service delivery issues not being attended to.
“In Wallacedene, residents wait for months for their blocked drain to be cleared. Imagine living like that, and then they come to me, accusing me of not caring about the community. The blocked drains are causing sewage spills in the community”
All councillors asked Mr Theart to have a second look at his statistics and bring “the truth” to the next sub-council meeting this month.
Mayco member for corporate services Sharon Cottle said the City received more than 100 000 service requests a month and for January 2020 reports were related to electricity, which included reports of no power, individual street lights not working, as well as a section or row of street lights that were out.
Blocked and overflowing sewers were also reported, and there were several requests for water to be reconnected. Stolen and damaged bins were also among the most reported requests.
She added that all requests were deemed important, but the time to respond to a service request varied depending on the type of request.
“A broken streetlight may be replaced within an hour and a pothole repaired within 72 hours. It all depends on the circumstances, more complicated faults may take hours or days to repair/replace.”
Ms Cottle did not respond to questions about work being incomplete but closed on the system.
Residents can log a service request by calling the City’s Call Centre on 0860 103 089; reporting it at www.capetown.gov.za by clicking on City Connect.
For water and sewer faults, SMS 31373 or email water@capetown.gov.za; for electricity faults, SMS 31220 or email power@capetown.gov.za; for road and transport-related requests, call 0800 65 64 63 or email transport.info@capetown.gov.za