Speed up bureaucracy

IT RILES me greatly to read of a laggardly bureaucracy in the city that is holding up the passing of building plans. In his open letter in Tuesday’s Cape Times, Frank Allewell lamented the pathetic service which has been holding back plans for months and months in the department.

He asks, as he is constitutionally entitled to, about “what has happened to the ethos of serving the public?”

In 1995, when I was still an MP, we went on a study tour to Malaysia. At that time the country was aggressively pursuing its 20-20 vision. We heard from our hosts that the country was developing a new port and that the minister in charge had a mobile office on site to ensure that the project was delivered on time and inside the budget.

We also learnt that the Malaysian bureaucracy had 14 days to deal with applications of all types, failing which the applicant could request the official rubber stamp and self-authorise the application.

We were therefore understandably very enthusiastic, in the early Parliament of great hope, when Batho Pele was adopted as the lodestone for government bureaucracy.

All of that has now faded from memory and projects and plans languish inside a slow-moving bureaucracy to the annoyance of citizens and detriment of our economy.

If Cope had its way in council, we would have approved a dozen architectural firms in the city to receive plans from other firms for scrutiny and approval, provided that the process was completed within a fortnight.

It would have been the equivalent of someone going to a private hospital for swift attention, as opposed to waiting at a failing state hospital to be attended to. On the approval of the plans by the second architectural firm, the city officials would have just 48 hours to raise any queries or request any revisions.

After the expired time, they would have had to stamp the plans and let the process go forward unimpeded.

Narendra Modi is now bringing in 10 experts from the private sector to galvanise the Indian bureaucracy. That is what we also need to do. I keep hearing in council that the city wants to raise the bar. It can’t do better than give the private sector a role to speed things up, maintain standards and help the economy grow, and to achieve all of that without incurring any costs to itself.

That’s what Cope would have done. Farouk Cassim (Cope) Milnerton