ANC-led Ekurhuleni nowhere near a Smart City

by Cllr Ruhan Robinson — DA Shadow MMC for Corporate and Shared Services in Ekurhuleni

Date: 06 July 2021

Release: Immediate

Type: Media Statement

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Ekurhuleni continues to share the frustration of residents across the poorly governed ANC and coalition-led City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) and their inability to deliver quality services.

This, as once again, communities in Ekurhuleni have had to endure another service delivery failure when residents tried to purchase electricity units and were hard hit with a R200 ‘service fee’.

This is another fumble by the failing ANC and its coalition partners, who also recently mishandled the Property Valuation Roll, forcing frustrated residents to queue, during a pandemic to lodge objections against the ridiculous Property Valuation Roll.

And herein lies the problem with the ANC and its inability to implement smart, digital solutions. Ekurhuleni has long tried to embrace the idea of a smart city but falls short in every way.

A smart city is a city that uses Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions in increasing its operational efficiency, in bettering the quality of services being delivered. For years, Ekurhuleni has been talking about becoming a digital city and then, becoming a smart city, but as with much else, the ANC over-promises and under-delivers.

According to the ANC-Mayor, Cllr Mzwandile Masina, he is of the misguided opinion that Ekurhuleni is on the fast track to becoming a smart city.

This hollow opinion is as erroneous as many of his ill-informed tweets. In fact, of late, residents have had to endure failing ICT systems and wholly twentieth-century solutions for twenty-first-century problems. Recently, residents have had to queue at Customer Care Centres (CCCs) across the City to object against unfairly high valuations on their properties. This is something many residents could ill-afford, during what is arguably the most vicious wave of COVID-19, in South Africa, to date. While a digital solution to filing objections online would have been the preferred solution of Smart City, Ekurhuleni opted for potentially life-threatening queues.

A second failure, which could be described as nothing less than a blunder, occurred when tariff B prepaid customers were charged business rates when purchasing electricity and the initial solution provided for correction, was once again for customers to stand in potentially dangerous queues to get their refunded units. Luckily, this has been fixed and customers will indeed receive their units without having to go to their CCCs.

Lastly, the bane of everyone’s experience with the City’s failure in becoming a smart city lies with the Call Centre and the My CoE App. Recently, the Call Centre has been down frequently, with residents being told they are low down on the queue, or simply saying that the maximum number of callers has been reached. Similarly, the My CoE App has not been of more help, with calls getting rejected in most instances, without any reasons being provided.

This increasingly poor level of service delivery to communities highlights the failure of the ANC and its coalition partners. Residents are forced to be subjected to this level of mismanagement and inept governance.

In the DA-run City of Cape Town, which was voted the smartest city in Africa, the DA has ensured that the implementation of smart city strategies are realised. Through e-government services and public Wi-Fi coupled with the City’s open data portal, one of the first in Africa is allowing its citizens to live in a truly smart city. The DA-run City of Cape Town uses smart-grid technologies which better support the well-established digital economy. All this provides better access to more effective and efficient service delivery.

So while the ANC-led City of Ekurhuleni makes its residents queue to lodge objections, and Cllr Masina dreams of F1 racetracks and Disney Worlds, the DA-led City of Cape Town is working with innovative technologies to better the lives of all its citizens.

#Time4Change

*ANC- Coalition Partners: African Independent Congress (AIC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Patriotic Alliance (PA) and Independent Ratepayers Association of South Africa (IRASA)

Cllr Ruhan Robinson

DA Shadow MMC for Corporate and Shared Services in Ekurhuleni