ESCALATING violent service delivery protests have forced Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan to set up a centralised information hub to resolve all local government-related complaints.
Gordhan's chief of staff Dumisa Jele told Sowetan the hub was in response to the fact that there was no joint operations centre that looks at the goings-on in municipalities.
"The hub will be an interactive process and ensure that we have a better understanding of what is happening on the ground," he said.
Jele said the hub would enable the government to have real-time monitoring of events in municipalities.
The hub will coordinate, follow up and resolve all local government-related referrals from the presidential and the anti-corruption hotlines.
Jele added it would also receive service delivery grievances directly from the community, which Gordhan hoped would allow local and provincial politicians to intervene by either responding to the protests or preventing them.
The government wants the hub to complement the municipal customer service standards and charters to improve access to services and promote quality by engaging customers on the standards of service to expect and what to do should something go wrong.
Gordhan's new hub comes a month after Municipal IQ - a web-based data and intelligence service on local government - warned that service delivery protests might reach a new peak this year.
By the end of August there had been 134 service delivery protests, according to Municipal IQ.
It said 2014 accounted for 15% of all protests registered on its municipal hot spots monitor since 2004.
In 2012, there were 173 service delivery protests across the country while 155 were recorded last year and Municipal IQ fears that 2014 may have more protests than any other year.
Gauteng accounted for nearly a quarter of all protests between January and August this year, while Free State and Limpopo had the least.
Last week, security guards at Newclare train station, Johannesburg, shot dead a protester after Kathrada Park informal settlement residents took to the streets complaining about lack of housing. The protesters burnt the office building at the station .
sidimbal@sowetan.co.za
For more stories like this one, be sure to buy the Sowetan newspaper from Mondays to Fridays
State to set up info hub on protests
ESCALATING violent service delivery protests have forced Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan to set up a centralised information hub to resolve all local government-related complaints.
Gordhan's chief of staff Dumisa Jele told Sowetan the hub was in response to the fact that there was no joint operations centre that looks at the goings-on in municipalities.
"The hub will be an interactive process and ensure that we have a better understanding of what is happening on the ground," he said.
Jele said the hub would enable the government to have real-time monitoring of events in municipalities.
The hub will coordinate, follow up and resolve all local government-related referrals from the presidential and the anti-corruption hotlines.
Jele added it would also receive service delivery grievances directly from the community, which Gordhan hoped would allow local and provincial politicians to intervene by either responding to the protests or preventing them.
The government wants the hub to complement the municipal customer service standards and charters to improve access to services and promote quality by engaging customers on the standards of service to expect and what to do should something go wrong.
Gordhan's new hub comes a month after Municipal IQ - a web-based data and intelligence service on local government - warned that service delivery protests might reach a new peak this year.
By the end of August there had been 134 service delivery protests, according to Municipal IQ.
It said 2014 accounted for 15% of all protests registered on its municipal hot spots monitor since 2004.
In 2012, there were 173 service delivery protests across the country while 155 were recorded last year and Municipal IQ fears that 2014 may have more protests than any other year.
Gauteng accounted for nearly a quarter of all protests between January and August this year, while Free State and Limpopo had the least.
Last week, security guards at Newclare train station, Johannesburg, shot dead a protester after Kathrada Park informal settlement residents took to the streets complaining about lack of housing. The protesters burnt the office building at the station .
sidimbal@sowetan.co.za
For more stories like this one, be sure to buy the Sowetan newspaper from Mondays to Fridays
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