Mayor Patricia de Lille took her office to Ward 49, where she hosted the first Mayoral Pop-Up Office, with ward councillor Rashid Adams and Sub-council 17 chairperson, George March, on Wednesday June 6.
Ward 49 includes Hazendal, Kewtown, parts of Langa, parts of Bridgetown, parts of Silvertown and parts of Athlone.
According to Ms De Lille, the pop-up office was one of the City of Cape Town’s new programmes to make government more accessible, responsive, and visible to all its residents. The initiative, she said, was aimed at pro-actively looking at areas to see what interventions and improvements could be implemented “instead of waiting for people to complain”.
She started her visit by driving and walking through Kewtown and Bridgetown, to look at the open spaces in the area, the cleanliness and general state of the ward.
Said Ms De Lille: “This was aimed at identifying problems we need to address such as illegal dumping, looking for potholes that need to be fixed and any other interventions needed in the area. I was also joined by members of the City’s Women for Change programme in Kewtown. This programme sees the City employ women from the area to help us with service requests and combating socio-economic problems. These ‘community mothers’ have been an integral part in helping us build a caring and safe city by uplifting Kewtown and the surrounding areas through helping senior citizens, walking children to school safely, cleaning illegal dumping and graffiti, and hosting recycling workshops.
“I sat down with residents who came to talk to me about their concerns and I shared information about the City’s services available to them. I also checked the kind of C3 notifications (service requests) to see what the main concerns are in the area in order to step up our response to deal with the complaints and service requests. The pop-up office concept gives full effect to the City’s Organisational Development and Transformation Plan (ODTP) of building a customer-centric administration that is responsive to the needs of our residents.”
The councillors and City officials also distributed forms with all the City’s contact details so residents are informed of the correct channels to address their complaints to. It is hoped that the Mayoral Pop-Up Office will visit areas across the city in the coming weeks.