On Wednesday, 25 July 2018, we took the Mayoral Pop-Up Office to Masiphumelele where I was joined by Mayoral Committee Member for Area South, Cllr Eddie Andrews, and the local ward councillor, Cllr Felicity Purchase, and PR councillors Gillion Bosman and Patricia Francke.
This is the fifth 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.
We started today’s Pop-Up office with a walkabout through the community. I was pleased to see the new washhouses the City is building to serve the community. I also listened to residents and City staff about the state of sanitation and the canals in the area.
Currently, the City is running several projects to improve infrastructure and services in Masiphumelele.
We are working closely with the community and meeting regularly with leaders to unblock issues raised by residents.
This close working relationship is strengthened by the support from the Human Rights Commission and the Public Protector’s Office.
The City is investing approximately R13,8 million in a new minibus-taxi facility for operators and, more importantly, for the nearly 3 300 commuters who will be departing from this interchange to their destinations in Simon’s Town, Fish Hoek, Kommetjie, and Noordhoek.
Masiphumele is also one of two communities where the City is spending about R27,3 million for the construction of fire stations.
Given the dire need for housing, the City is investing in new housing opportunities in Masiphumelele. This project is part of 36 new projects that the City is investing R2,1 billion in to develop new housing opportunities over the next three financial years.
I visited several possible sites of land where the City is currently conducting studies to determine if it can be used to develop housing opportunities. We are constantly sharing this information with residents.
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.
My office has been inundated with inquiries from residents on when the Mayoral Pop-Up Office will make a visit to 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 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.