​Fridays look set to be busy days for City of Johannesburg workers. They will no longer be “half days”.

This is after the Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Cllr Jolidee Matongo, with his cabinet, contractors and employees of the City, on Friday, 20 August 2021, pulled up their sleeves, put their overalls and boots on, and inspected the streets of Soweto and surrounding areas to ensure service delivery reaches people of Soweto efficiently and timeously.

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These oversight visits are intended to take place every Friday of the month.

“The old days of relaxing after the mayoral oversight are over. Employees must start or continue to do the work as we leave the site. Every Monday, the mayoral committee will go out in all the affected areas to check on the progress of all the identified problems a week before,” said Mayor Matongo.

On Wednesdays, the MMCs deployed to the regions will have to check if the services are delivered as expected. All the entities and the departments of the city will receive a list of all the service delivery failures in all the 135 wards of the city and are expected to attend to them in 72 hours.

The oversight visits will be conducted unannounced.

“Fridays will be an opportunity to do the checklist of the progress of things attended to by the depots as well,” Mayor Matongo said.

“The City is employing 10 people per ward on a full-time basis to help identify the problems, report and escalate them, ensuring problems are attended to. Pikitup is also employing 15 people per ward to help with the up cleaning of the streets.  The city is targeting about 20 000 EPWP jobs across the city in this new financial year to help deal with unemployment with private sector on board to assist,” Mayor Matongo said.

He also said electricity was a big problem in Soweto. “We are in a process of signing a memorandum of understanding with Eskom nationally as they supply Soweto. We are looking at a situation where City Power, our energy company, can take over the supply of electricity in Soweto, Ivory Park and Orange Farm and other areas Eskom supply so that the City is fully responsible and accountable should there be problems of lack of provision in this instance.”

Mayor Matongo and the Member of the Mayoral Committee for Transport in the City of Johannesburg, Councillor Nonhlanhla Makhubu were impressed with the JRA visibility in the streets of Soweto. The road agency’s workers were constructing and painting speed humps, painting road signs and fixing potholes.