Durban City Hall, the administrative seat of the eThekwini municipality.
Ratepayers in KwaZulu-Natal can now evaluate their municipality’s performance by voting telephonically and putting pressure on municipal bosses to take their jobs more seriously.
Performance evaluations of KwaZulu-Natal municipalities will be done annually instead of every five years and residents can participate in the process by phoning or by sending SMSes to bolster the mayor they feel who is performing well, or to expose under-performing mayors and their municipalities.
Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs spokesman, Lennox Mabaso, said this initiative would give residents an opportunity to have a say in how municipalities were being run.
“This is so that people can take an interest in the work done by municipalities and monitor their performance.”
Municipalities would also be spurred into action knowing that they were being continuously judged.
Mabaso said the aim was also to reduce the number of service delivery protests and open up lines of communication between municipal bosses and residents.
Ratepayers could vote on how they were received and treated when they visit municipal offices, and comment on other criteria such as their municipality’s service delivery performance, governance and financial management.
Mabaso said there would be an adjudication panel that would evaluate each municipality, and these scores together with the public votes would be tallied and analysed.
“There will be an independent verification process done by auditors to ensure that the process is beyond reproach,” said Mabaso.
This Friday, poorly performing mayors will be exposed and mayors who excel in their municipalities will be publicly recognised during the municipal excellence awards ceremony at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre.
Mabaso said this was not a naming and shaming exercise but was aimed at motivating all municipalities to perform at their peak and help keep mayors on their toes.
DA MPL George Mari hailed the initiative, saying if it was implemented and monitored well, any problems affecting municipalities could be picked up sooner.
“We rely on the auditor-general’s report on the goings-on at municipalities. So having a yearly review is a good starting point to pick up on any service delivery challenges,” he said.
Lilian Develing, of the Combined Ratepayers’ Association, said municipalities needed to put more emphasis on staff training because they needed competent staff to deal with service delivery queries. “Call centres are the worst because nobody gets back to you to give you feedback or their phones go unanswered,” she said.
Residents have until Friday to vote at 083 900 7685 or SMS at 33810.
