Give us an extension

THE Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance notes with great concern that the City of Cape Town, in its proposals for a drought levy, called for community inputs between December 12, 2017 and January 8, 2018.

Once again the City of Cape Town disregards best practice in public participation processes by requesting community participation during the festive holiday season. I thought there was a tacit agreement between civil society and the City that the festive holidays will be avoided when embarking on public participation. This, for very good reasons.

Most Capetonians are away on holiday and generally businesses are closed at this time, making access and participation difficult.

Most civil society organisations, especially ratepayer bodies, depend on volunteers and have no full-time offices.

Cape Town only comes back to life again after the first week in January. To ask these people who must attend to civic matters in their spare time, to meet and formulate positions is rather disingenuous from my point of view. The Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance calls for an extension of time at least to the end of January 2018.

There are so many things wrong with this idea which would warrant detailed investigation and expert opinions, and if civil society is not given sufficient time to formulate is inputs, then the whole exercise if futile.

The City will be doing its citizens a great disservice by perpetuating lip-service and a tick-box approach to public participation in this case.

It is our hope that common sense would prevail and the City managers will do right by its people.

Philip Bam Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance Grassy Park