SUCCESSES WITH QUERIES FROM THE PUBLIC

MPL Dacre Haddon during a recent visit to the Gariep municipality.

The DA Eastern Cape MPLs and their secretaries in Bhisho deal with queries from the public on a daily basis.

Eve Viol, secretary of Dacre Haddon and John Cupido, says:  “I just have files and files of people looking for houses, people being given the wrong house, people complaining about housing, bridges collapsing, and potholes and potholes everywhere . . . and complaints about the Departments. However, I find that through mutual respect and understanding we can build a good working relationship with people in the Departments and they bend over backwards, where they can, to assist. There are some who don’t even bother to reply but there are some who are incredible.  And I think they need to be applauded,”.

Here are some examples of successes from Eve’s files:

Kelbrick

• 11.11.2010 – complaint that he had struggled for five years to get rezoning on land in Port Alfred – he said his appeal was just a file in an office in Bhisho and he was not happy!
• Thanks to our good working relationship with Riaan Strauss who handled the appeal in the Dept in Bhisho, and Dirk du Plessis the town planner, we managed to trace and follow this appeal through all the specific procedures on a fortnightly basis through to approval on 18 April 2011.

Van der Vyver

• 29.6.2011 – complaint regarding old King Williams Town Road: “especially between the Mdansane and Nahoon dam turnoffs, also at Cementile and about 200m before the Nahoon Dam turnoff the potholes are becoming dongas and many cars are being damaged”.
• Due to good working relationship with Nkululeko Poya, DDG Infrastructure and his staff Zuliswa Ngwane and Pamela Birungi, Mr van de Vyver advised that they were all repaired on 7 July.

Mather

• Client built a trailer in 2007 and was still struggling to get it registered in 2010!
•  We struggled for three months to obtain reasons for refusal to register the trailer till eventually a staff member at Dept of Transport provided a new set of all the necessary documents required, drove from Bhisho to Port Elizabeth to meet Mr Mather and take him through the process at the PE offices and then lodged the appeal.
• Two weeks later the transaction was finalised and Mr Mather phoned to say he was on his way to Port Alfred on a fishing trip – with his trailer.

Vd Westuizen

• Client stranded on farm due to causeway collapsing in heavy rains – subsequently he and a neighbour managed to make a makeshift causeway but it was not safe.
• Working with Marius Geyser, Cacadu District Road Engineer, we managed to establish exactly which causeway had collapsed over which area of the Koonap River through mapping research assistance by Andrew Lane from the Department.
• Arranged for Johan Kloppers, seconded engineer, to drive out to the farm and assess the damage.
• Thanks to this assistance the client has been serviced and a longer-term plan is on the cards for later this year.