The Welkom Business Forum and the Welkom Residents Forum are today launching a comprehensive service delivery application, Save Matjhabeng, to address the ever-mounting municipal problems in a dysfunctional municipality.
The Save Matjhabeng initiative will cover and address residents’ grievances in each of the 36 wards in Matjhabeng.
This venture is being done in conjunction with the Power of One community group, which already administers a number of community WhatsApp groups dealing with service delivery issues.
The Power of One will be responsible for coordinating residents’ grievances on their groups and then moving these complaints to the Save Matjhabeng platform. This united front will ensure that the complaints are synchronised into one reporting function on the Save Matjhabeng application.
This new and comprehensive reporting system is a first of its kind for ratepayers to enable them to report, with location and photographs, service delivery problems. It is a free-to-use service for everyone in Matjhabeng.
The application is very thorough and because it is Google-based, it pinpoints a resident’s location upon registration. Now residents have the power to complain in the palm of their hand.
Upon registering, residents will supply a name and surname, contact email, municipal account number, address of the issue that is being reported, a suburb, the town in Matjhabeng, the postal code, and the issue type.
Issues include: electricity, water leaks, roads and potholes, sewage, refuse removal, property rates and taxes, bylaw enforcement, municipal account services, billing, rates and clearances, meter readings (electricity and water), other municipal matters and even appointment requests.
Residents will be able to describe their issues and upload photographs.
They can even take a photo of a municipal worker who is defaulting in his work and the location will be captured. The photograph of the worker will be sent to the municipality.
On registering a complaint, residents will be afforded the opportunity to add the nature of fault, and note whether it is critical to the environment, critical to human safety or critical to economic activity.
This official reporting system is for each and every resident of Matjhabeng. Problems are instantly reported to the relevant departments and residents immediately get reference numbers on their phones. These reference numbers will then be forwarded to the relevant heads of department in the Matjhabeng Municipality to act upon.
This fault-reporting application is sponsored by Netelek and allows the Matjhabeng community to collect data on faults within their area.
“The more information we have, the better equipped the Save Matjhabeng initiative will be to bring these issues to the attention of the responsible people. This evidence will also assist in future litigation to force Matjhabeng to start delivering,” says Jakes Jooste of the Business Forum management committee.
