The Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s Standing Committee on Petitions, led by Chairperson Adv. Ezra Letsoalo, convened a meeting with the Gauteng Department of COGTA and the Department of Human Settlements this morning at the Gauteng Legislature.
The committee is hindered with unresolved petitions that are currently clogging the petitions system, obscuring the Committee from tackling other substantive issues while addressing the backlog. The meeting was largely for the two Departments to provide progress reports on historical batches of petitions related to their areas of responsibility, since they were handed over in July 2023.
The Department of COGTA has been tasked by the Committee to effectively facilitate, coordinate and speedily report on all outstanding municipal service delivery petitions for the effective closure of the petitions, thus addressing the Committee’s backlog. The updated report from the Department was optimistic in how synergies in the Department’s reformulation of the petitions management function between the municipal structures and the provincial executive would assist in expediting the resolution of petitions.
A total of 142 petitions on RDP housing allocations ranging from applications made between 1996 to 2022, including, old C-form applications (1996 – 1999), and the elderly and persons living with disabilities were handed over to the Department of Human Settlements yesterday. RDP allocations are the largest chunk of petitions that the Committee is inundated with. During the current 6th Legislative term, 51% of all adopted petitions were RDP related. The handover is to encourage the fast-tracking of the resolution of residents’ petitions.
“The Committee no longer wants to deal with the same complaint on service delivery issues individually. These tend to obscure our focus on more substantive issues that relate to other service delivery issues from different service departments. The petitions system is well utilised by ordinary citizens who have no other redress mechanisms for their issues. We therefore, want to give all petitions our attention and speedily resolve them, especially where there are no inter-reliant limitations and bring our petitions register updated with the current roll of petitions”; expressed Adv. Letsoalo, Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Petitions.
The Committee expects a comprehensive report from the Department of Human Settlements. This report is expected to illustrate the extent the Department would have gone to individually notify and update all 142 petitioners on their application status. Furthermore, update the Committee on the creation of channels where petitioners can frequently enquire from, for the latest update on their application status. The petitions remain open until such a time the Committee reaches satisfactory levels of interventions were implemented to warrant closure of the petitions.
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