City’s Rapid Response Team’s Interventions Begins to Pay Dividends
Date: 2021-10-03 17:15:57
City’s Rapid Response Team’s Interventions Begins to Pay Dividends
ETHEKWINI NEWSFLASH
19/08/2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The eThekwini Municipality is pleased with the positive results the Rapid Response Team (RRT) is yielding. The team comprising units that are on the coalface of service delivery, has this week unlocked service delivery bottlenecks that have been plaguing among other areas such as Pinetown, Mayville and Bonela. Next week, its next stop will be the Durban city centre that accounts for a lion’s share of human traffic in the City.
Their priorities are illegal dumping, road maintenance, fixing electricity streetlights, pruning trees, leaking water pipes, removal of illegal electricity connections, clearing blocked stormwater drains, and enforcing by-laws.
Acting City Manager Musa Mbhele who is the brains behind this initiative, says the City requires permanent partnership with stakeholders for it to live up to its vision of being a liveable city by 2030.
“The Rapid Response Team is well resourced, and their mandate is to address all service delivery complaints with speed. We are now on a mission to strengthen our partnership with the taxi industry that is responsible for operating taxi ranks. We are also embarking on educational campaigns to instil a culture of civil pride to residents. We believe this will play a meaningful role in changing behaviour, especially when it comes to litter. For instance, most of our storm water drains are clogging because of litter that is disposed irresponsibly. With the summer rains approaching, a lot of it will end up in our storm water drains if we do not nip this irresponsible behaviour in the bud,” said Mbhele.
Several streetlights that were malfunctioning have been attended to and the City is moving with speed to clear the backlog. Huge progress is being made in repainting street lanes while traffic lights that were damaged have been replaced. Good work is also being done to resurface streets while the backlog on potholes have been reduced.
The City commends the public for taking the initiative to report hiccups on service delivery and residents are urged to continue to do so.
