Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Super service delivery plan
Mayco members will prioritise urgent issues City will work harder, promises De Lille
MAKING the city “more responsive” is the aim of an imminent restructuring in Cape Town to create a superstructure of four mayoral committee members dedicated to beefing up service delivery across the metropole.
Newly elected DA mayor Patricia de Lille said in an interview yesterday it was time for Cape Town to “work harder” and “be more responsive”.
“Time is not on our side,” she said. “To deal with the imbalances of the past, apartheid spatial planning and all of those things that you find in all cities across South Africa, we need to inject some urgency into that.
“The big change that’s going to come is that we will be restructuring the city to make provision for four mayoral committee members who will be assigned to concentrate just on service delivery.”
Cape Town’s 24 sub councils would be shared between them – each having responsibility for every aspect of service delivery for six sub councils.
This would cover everything from “the roll-out of water, services, sanitation and refuse removal, and even, if the province is building a clinic say, for that, too”.
“We want to become more responsive,” she said. The city had extensive facilities – SMS, free call lines and 0800 numbers – for people to register complaints, but “we want to reach out more so that people can complain sooner, and we can respond sooner”.
The introduction of the four-member mayoral committee team “will be the key difference compared to the last five years”.
De Lille said she was “humbled by the confidence and trust of voters”, but recognised that it was “a big responsibility”.
She was confident the city had a “tried and tested” plan and a record as “the best-run metro in the country with clean governance, no corruption, (and programmes to) create conditions conducive to economic growth, and creating jobs”.
This message had “resonated with the rest of the country”.
But there was no room for complacency. “Cape Town is one of the fastest growing cities in South Africa. Urbanisation is a reality, and it is putting tremendous pressure on our infrastructure.
“And you have to prioritise,” she said.