City continues to be dismayed at bad faith of the Social Justice Coalition
The City is dismayed that the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) has yet again acted in bad faith as they prepare to launch a ‘report' on their ‘social audit' into the City's Janitorial Programme. Read more below:
At the outset it must be noted that the City of Cape Town has, over the last few years, done all it can to provide comprehensive information to the SJC on the Janitorial Programme. The City has even gone so far as to participate in a mediation process with the SJC on the Janitorial Programme, in the hope that it would help create a beneficial working relationship. Unfortunately, at virtually every stage of this process, the SJC has not cooperated and has ignored substantive concerns - not only expressed by the City but by other organisations as well.
The key concerns the City has are as follows:
The SJC has yet to acknowledge or apologise for the inaccurate information that they circulated during their last social audit concerning area cleaning and refuse removal.
The SJC has yet to acknowledge that they fail to understand complex government processes, particularly relating to legislative, financial and human resource constraints.
During and after the ‘social audits' into the Janitorial Programme in July 2014, the City asked for the raw data collected to be provided. This reasonable request, which would help the City fully understand any shortcomings identified, has been ignored by SJC.
The SJC will no doubt have compiled a media library of faulty toilets - this despite the City repeatedly asking the SJC to log faulty toilets immediately through the City's reporting system. Instead, the SJC seems to prefer to leave it to months after the time, which is not beneficial to residents. If there is a fault, it should be reported immediately so that the City can address the matter (as it does in all areas of Cape Town).
Additionally the SJC will no doubt intentionally ignore the overwhelming majority of toilets that they ‘audited' which were in full working order.
It is deeply ironic that while Johannesburg and other cities are facing chronic and debilitating water shortages as well as major sanitation backlogs, the SJC is openly hostile to the City of Cape Town. The City of Cape Town is the only metro where residents have universal access to safe and reliable drinking water and where there is adequate sanitation in informal settlements.
The situation is made even more ironic when it is considered that the City voluntary introduced the Janitorial Programme in the interests of improving service delivery to informal settlements and creating much needed job opportunities. The implementation of a programme of this kind is complex and will always have teething issues which have been acknowledged and remedied. The programme is currently running in over 160 communities, with approximately 900 janitors employed at any given time.
The City is currently conducting its own assessment of efficacy of the programme with a view to determining the future of nature of its roll-out. Given the SJC's past disingenuous conduct and fundamental lack of understanding of the programme, they will not be included in this process.
Statement issued by Councillor Ernest Sonnenberg, Mayoral Committee Member for Utility Services, City of Cape Town, September 30 2014
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