Residents of Region F in wards 54, 56, 57 and124 gathered at the Reuven Retirement Village Hall in West Turffontein for the regions’ third Community-Based Planning (CBP) workshop on Saturday, 29 October 2022. The workshops help the municipality understand the community issues and service delivery backlogs.
They are also designed to produce service delivery needs for each ward in all of the City’s seven regions.
The implementation approach for the CBPs has been the adoption of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). It is a way of thinking and an approach to development which focuses on the strengths, abilities, opportunities, talents and gifts present in the communities and uses this as a foundation or starting point for community development. It emphasizes using what the community has in their wards.
The approach is geared towards community-driven development rather than development driven by external agencies; and it builds on the appreciative inquiry which identifies and analyses the community’s past successes. This strengthens people’s confidence in their own capabilities and inspires them to act.
Key issues raised related to management and maintenance of City retirement villages/old age homes by the department of Human Settlements, upgrading and maintenance of community facilities such as parks, upgrading of the Forest Hill Tower, resurfacing of certain streets, homelessness, skills development centre which aligns to programmes geared towards addressing the needs of the youth, and the reopening of Reuven clinic for the elderly.
Public safety was raised as a concern especially street robberies, residential and business robberies, burglaries all driven by the prevalent of drugs in the area. Communities further indicated a need for more involvement in the ownership of parks. They also requested the city to build homeless shelters, drug rehab centres and more multi-purpose centres which can service a cluster of wards.
Residents came up with wonderful ideas on what communities can do and have been doing with and without minimal assistance from the city. These include vegetable gardens, clean-up campaigns, street patrollers, beautification and maintenance of parks, know your neighbour programmes, distribution of food parcels in old age homes, community WhatsApp group and more.
A resident in Ward 56 said: “I’m happy with the workshop as it was an excellent opportunity for members of the ward committee and residents to get better control on what the community needs to be doing to assist the city to achieve its objectives.
“The planning done will be help us going forward and we hoping to get feedback either directly or reporting back to the ward committees on an ongoing basis,” he added.
Dawn Banner, a resident in Ward 124, said: “I’m very impressed with the way the session was run, we raised our grievances on the problems we face daily, hoping our problems will be addressed because in the past officials would write our issues in a book and nothing was done.”
Earl Stoles, the Acting Regional Director for Region F, said: “Community based planning directly engages community leaders and the broad-based citizenry in an effort to move their community from today’s reality to tomorrow’s possibilities.
“CBP supports the participatory objectives of integrated development planning through giving ‘bottom-up’ legitimacy to municipal decision making grounded in IDPs, this while empowering communities to take on development responsibility and making local government more accountable,” said Stoles.
Each ward had to identify three main priority capex projects from a list of identified projects in the ward, list quick turnaround projects communities can do with minimal assistance from the city; and community-driven projects communities and wards can do for themselves. The three priority projects will be submitted for inclusion in the 2023/24 financial year.
Written by Dudu Lushaba
31/10/2022