To:
the Premier of Gauteng,
the Mayor of Johannesburg,
the Speaker of Johannesburg City Council and,
the Municipal Manager of Johannesburg

From: The residents and ratepayers across the city.

Residents of Montgomery Park, Roosevelt Park and elsewhere across Ward 88 have been frustrated by City of Johannesburg’s neglect of public infrastructure, poor service delivery and its unresponsiveness to residents. We have tried various means to persuade the city to halt the decay of our community and, at the very least, maintain the existing infrastructure. So far we have followed all available channels open to citizens including:

• Becoming involved in the local government public participation processes.
• Making submissions to the city regarding budget allocations.
• Submitting to the city suggestions for the Integrated Development Programme (IDP).
• Systematically logging service delivery issues with the relevant City of Johannesburg departments.
• Informing the councillor and the ward committee of serious issues.
• Promoting community-based initiatives to improve our general environment and secure our areas.

The city ritually ignores these efforts, is unresponsive to our plight and does not take responsibility for non-performance by its employees and agents. Our frustrations culminated in a series of peaceful protests held in May/June this year.

Our hope was then that the city would acknowledge our frustration and, at the very least, implement actions which would limit the decay of the public infrastructure and the deterioration of our living environment.

A few examples of the City’s non-performance include:

• The failure to seal roads to prevent potholes
• Not switching streetlights off during the day, boosting electricity wastage.
• Failure to timeously repair water leaks, leading to massive wastage.
• Failure to restore electricity after scheduled load-shedding.
• Failure to close excavations made by Johannesburg Water thereby creating hazards for pedestrians and motor traffic.
• Not compelling JMPD officials to enforce traffic regulations and by-laws or even follow these laws themselves.
• Failure to address corruption and the awarding of uncompetitive tenders
• A haphazard , chaotic rates/ valuation adjustment that has resulted in residents INCLUDING PENSIONERS suffering substantive financial drain.

The above has contributed to a significant deterioration of our public spaces, living environment, quality of life and our ability to conduct economic activity. The well-being of our communities has been significantly compromised by the city.

Our protests were ignored by the City and service levels have deteriorated even further. This compels us to either accept the degradation of our living environment or further escalate our response. Rather than be party to our immiseration we believe that we are now required to escalate our action. Short of calling for a rates boycott we now present you, our elected representatives, with an opportunity to address these issues timeously.

While we appreciate the constraints on those elected by us you remain accountable for the poor performance of the administration of the city as well as the performance of its executive. We are also fully aware of the precarious financial situation the city finds itself in and are accordingly reluctant to escalate the protests or advocate the withholding of rate and other payments to the city.

However, the problems our communities face are largely brought on by poor management, inefficiency, corruption and the lack of concern by the City rather than by a budget deficit or "political instability". We are of the opinion that City of Johannesburg is able to perform its core mandate irrespective of the machinations at executive level, but that administration is not being compelled to fulfill its mandate effectively.

We thus pray that the you recognise our frustration and respond concretely. In specific we appeal for the elected representatives to:

• Compel City of Johannesburg and its agents to meet (in practice and spirit) the relevant service levels agreements to which they are bound.
• Compel the city to ensure that their employees obey all relevant laws and regulations, ensure that there are consequences for transgressions.
• To ensure transparency in public accounts.In particular to publish all details of tenders awarded by the City on National Treasurys’ eTender portal (or similar public domain instrument).
• To ensure that there is sufficient investment in city infrastructure to prevent it declining even further.

We request that your response to this petition will be shared with us within 30 days of you receiving it, thereby preventing the need for the situation to be further escalated.

Spread the word.

We can be contacted at [email protected]

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