REBRANDING NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTION IN TSHWANE

NEWS MEDIA STATEMENT BY DA LEADER IN THE TSHWANE METRO COUNCIL, BRANDON TOPHAM: PRETORIA: 28 MARCH 2012

Response of Cllr Brandon Topham, DA leader in the Tshwane Metro Council, to 2012 Tshwane State of the City Address

Earlier this year Jack Bloom, DA leader in the Gauteng Legislature, aptly crowned Premier Nomvula Mokonyane as the “Queen of Promises”.  

In yesterday’s State of the City Address Tshwane Mayor Kgosientsho Ramokgopa earned himself the title as the Prince of Promises by continuing the provincial narrative of promises without practical follow through. 

The 'rebranding' of the city and the unveiling of a new city logo, although certainly aesthetically pleasant, is an example of how promises have become a substitute for action in Tshwane.

All the while the Metro is characterized by broken institutions, particularly the Tshwane Bus Service, the Tshwane Metro Police and the Client Services Centre.

With these institutions being unable to address the Metro’s most pressing issues, chances are that Tshwane will not be turned into an attractive destination for investment and job creation.

Entrepreneurs and businesses rely on a safe environment where people are connected to places of work and where infrastructure makes doing business easy and affordable.

If service delivery is to be rolled out to all, Tshwane also needs to commit itself seriously to the fight against cadre deployment and tenderpreneurship.

Without these conditions promises of job creating economic growth becomes empty, and rather cynical, political rhetoric.

The DA welcomes the Mayor's renewed promise to upgrade informal settlements like Brazzaville and Phomolong, which house some of the country’s poorest.

Tshwane's terrible distinction as the Metro with the worst access to sanitation, where one in five residents do not have access to proper toilets, necessitated action much, much earlier.

The DA is also delighted by the renewed focus on prepaid electricity meters, which empower residents in taking responsibility for consumption. 

We remain committed to contributing constructive solutions and to assist the Mayor in raising levels of service delivery to all Tshwane's residents.

THE STATE OF THE CITY

After years of mismanagement the Tshwane Bus Service is still dysfunctional, with many promises and acknowledgement of the problem by the Mayor, but yet no successful action.

Instead of promising a turnaround strategy for the Service, the Mayor should have heeded DA advice to appoint competent management and deal decisively with wildcat strikes.

While other Metros already have a functional Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system, the blundering of the Tshwane Metro with a BRT system has left residents to cope with steadily worsening traffic congestion.

The promise of the Mayor's predecessor to deploy five Metro Police patrol cars with two officers each in every ward of the city seems far from being implemented.

The Tshwane Metro Police is seldom seen outside of the Pretoria city centre and have not contributed much to relieving severe congestion on routes like the R80 to Soshanguve.

The state of the Metro Police is hardly surprising given the fact that the Mayor chose not to rid the Metro Police command of deployed cadres like Ndumiso Jaca from the outset.

Although the city did receive a praiseworthy unqualified audit report, the emphasis of matter raised by the Auditor General (AG) has been poorly responded to by the Mayor and the ANC in Council.

Last month all ANC councillors in Tshwane, including the Mayor, shockingly voted against even considering a DA motion to open the Metro’s tender adjudications to public scrutiny – belying the Mayor’s commitment to be serious about fighting corruption.

The massive water and electricity losses due to leakages, also emphasised by the AG, is the result of years of neglect by the Metro to get on top of the city’s maintenance backlog.

This backlog has surely also contributed to the deterioration of the Rooiwal Sewage Works and the consequent pollution of the Apies River.

If the Metro cannot even complete routine maintenance upgrades and repairs, despite budgeting sufficient funds, it is difficult to imagine how its infrastructure programmes will contribute to job creation.

Lastly, the Metro's billing problems and the difficulty of ordinary residents to get hold of officials is to a large extent attributable to a Client Service Centre which does not work.

Residents still have to hold on for up to hours at a time to get through to the call centre and if this is achieved, receiving a 'reference number' is no guarantee that the problem will actually be attended to.
WHAT THE DA WOULD DO

If the DA were in power in Tshwane it would fast track the upgrading of informal settlements, take urgent steps to lessen the burden of Tshwane’s BRT bungle and fix broken service delivery institutions.

Tshwane Bus Service: the DA reiterates that the only way to establish a reliable and safe city bus service is to outsource the function to private operators.

This will enable the service to expand beyond its current limited ambit of the Pretoria city centre. It will also relieve the Metro, to some extent, of dealing with nagging labour disputes.

The DA will further relieve the congestion caused by Tshwane's BRT blunder by urgently constructing dedicated bus and taxi lanes on heavily congested routes like the R80.

The Tshwane Metro Police: the DA would commence a process to recruit a qualified, experienced and apolitical Metro Police Chief.

Not only does the training of Metro Police Officers have to be on par with those of the South African Police, a credible internal investigation unit needs to be re-established and supported by an accessible public complaints system.

The Metro Police is currently not fit for purpose, because it does not have the numbers and the equipment needed to do its job. Equipping the Metro Police should be an urgent capital budget priority.

Rooiwal Sewage Works: under a DA administration the maintenance and upgrading of infrastructure will not merely be a commitment but something which is constantly monitored.

We will never allow infrastructural management to deteriorate to the extent where the Rooiwal Sewage Works pollutes our rivers and places residents at risk of harm.

For this purpose the DA will conduct and publish an infrastructure audit, which will enable the Metro to stay on top of infrastructure needs.

Budgeting millions for infrastructure means very little if the Metro has neither the leadership nor the expertise to ensure that this money is optimally spent

Bid Adjudication Committee: a DA majority in the Tshwane Metro Council will open the body which awards the city's biggest contracts to members of the public, including the media.

Opening up obscure bureaucratic processes is the essential first step in countering corruption and the powerful vested interests which lurk behind it.

Client Service Centre: this service is woefully understaffed and under-skilled. At least 200 operators need to be employed to attend to service delivery queries in the call centre.

But it is not sufficient for operators to merely record complaints and generate reference numbers. These operators need to have the knowledge and skill to escalate complaints to the correct officials.

The DA will deliver a comprehensive response to the State of the City Address, with constructive policy proposals, on the 26 April sitting of the Tshwane Metro Council.