De Lille promises township better service delivery

MAYOR Patricia de Lille has promised Khayelitsha residents that the city will take a different approach in accelerating basic service delivery in the township.

She said the city has set aside R709.5 million to spend in the area during 2017/18 and R2.7 billion over the next three years. De Lille was addressing a group of residents during her Organisational Development and Transformation Plan roadshow in Khayelitsha yesterday.

Her plan aims to bring city services closer to the people.

Residents expressed their concerns to De Lille about issues such as unemployment, saying the city has not taken graduates into account, or had any programmes/ learnerships for them.

Resident Lonwabo Mqina asked the mayor about whether there would ever be change in the townships.

In responding De Lille said: “We are here to address you as the community.”

Resident Mandisa Maxala, 65, said: “I am very happy that the mayor has come here in Khayelitsha to speak to us and service will be delivered.”

De Lille said the city strived for excellence in everything and was focusing on the customers and delivering the highest standard of services.

“So today functions as your area’s own one-stop shop, where you have a single access point to information and services. The same way that we want to work together with residents, we also learnt that we need to improve the way that we work together internally. We needed to stop working in silos. We want to move beyond people associating government with being moved from pillar to post.

“These are just some of the exciting projects that we have proposed and when we go to council next month to seek approval for the budget, it will be some of the development that you can expect.

“We want to hear about how we can improve and what some of your ideas are.”