On Friday, 22 June 2018, we took the Mayoral Pop-Up Office to Khayelitsha where I was joined by Mayoral Committee Member for Area East, Cllr Anda Ntsodo; Cllrs Anele Gabuza (ward 98) and Xolisa Peter (ward 92); and Subcouncil 10 chairperson, Cllr Patrick Mngxunyeni (ward 94).
This is the third time in as many weeks that we have taken the Mayoral Pop-Up Office to our communities to further solidify relations between the City of Cape Town and residents.
The Pop-Up Office is one of the Mayor’s new initiatives to make government more accessible, responsive, and visible to all its residents. It has been enlightening to listen to residents’ views and concerns about service delivery, as well as their ideas on how the City can improve services to the community.
I believe it is always vital to engage with residents and share information about the City’s services face-to-face with them.
The Pop-Up Office is a realisation of the City’s Organisational Development and Transformation Plan (ODTP) of building a customer-centric administration that is responsive to the needs of our residents. We remain committed to ensuring the best quality of service for all residents of this great city.
We also want to ensure that the administration looks at communities to see what interventions and improvements we can implement proactively instead of waiting for people to complain.
In Khayelitsha, for the 2018/19 financial year, we have committed budget to prioritising the electrification of informal settlements, the building of infrastructure for the roll-out of the MyCiTi service to Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha as well as for a housing development in Harare.For this current financial year, ward 94 has just completed the construction of sidewalks in F Section worth R665 000.
The ward leadership also ran an Expanded Public Works Programme where 35 residents were employed to cleanse several areas and provided support worth R35 000 to neighbourhood watch groups.
In the neighbouring ward 98, the City is busy installing CCTV cameras worth R200 000 to assist us in keeping the area under surveillance and safe.
Cllr Gabuza has also been providing support to educare centres in the area as well as Early Childhood Development programmes.
Under the leadership of Cllr Peter in ward 92, the City has spent R250 000 upgrading two recreational parks in Ilitha Park.
We also recognise that lighting is an issue in some communities in Khayelitsha and we are addressing that by erecting street lights in Iliitha.
During our visit to the Khayelitsha Mall today, City officials were also on hand to distribute leaflets with the City’s contact details so that residents are informed of the correct channels to approach for complaints.
This is in line with our commitment to being a more accessible and responsive administration.
My office has been inundated with inquiries on when the Mayoral Pop-Up Office will make a visit in their area and I want to assure residents that we plan on taking our government to as many communities as possible over the coming weeks.
I will bring along the area-based Mayco members, councillors and officials to afford our citizens the opportunity to engage with them directly on service delivery matters.
I encourage residents to keep connecting with their area-based Mayco members, ward councillors and subcouncil offices on a regular basis so that they can be informed of developments in their wards and work with us to build safe and inclusive communities.