Business-person Moleleki Fokane was on the verge of losing his construction company after the City of Johannesburg department of housing continuously failed to pay him for building 102 RDP houses.
It had taken Fokane about nine years of being sent from pillar to post and several ignored emails to the city for him to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Due to the nonpayment, Fokane’s business was on the brink of collapse as he could not pay salaries, meet his tax obligations and apply for other tenders as his credit was in tatters.
Fokane had won a tender to build 500 RDP houses in Zandspruit, north of Johannesburg.
The tender was valued at about R2.8m.
He was supposed to deliver the 500 houses over a period of three years.
However, the construction hit several snags because there were shack dwellers on site and it was the city’s responsibility to have them removed but this was taking too long to be implemented, resulting in construction delays.
The department eventually terminated the contract over non-performance but it still allowed him to carry on building the few houses that he could.
Eventually, 102 homes were completed and handed over to beneficiaries but the city wouldn’t pay him for the work done.
In March 2016, Fokane approached the office of the City of Johannesburg Ombudsman for intervention.
According to the ombudsman, advocate Siduduzo Gumede, Fokane’s matter was a typical case of gross negligence by government officials.
His office's intervention included inspection in loco in Zandspruit and probing the details of the tender that Fokane was awarded.
The outcome of the investigation went in Fokane’s favour and the city was forced to pay him R1.3m for the work he did.
The ombudsman's office was established in July 2015 with the aim of helping residents whose human rights could have been compromised or violated because of maladministration by any department or entity of the City of Johannesburg.
These could vary from issues of billing to potholes, illegal dumping, delayed payments by the city, illegal evictions, noise pollution, title deeds and zoning violations.
The ombudsman’s role is to attend to these grievances by engaging the relevant department managers and then making recommendations that are legally binding on the state.
Though Gumede does not have power to fire, he can recommend disciplinary action against any municipal employee he finds to have been negligent in resolving a complaint.
Since its inception the office has received 5,778 complaints, of which 5,001 have been closed.
Gumede said billing disputes, illegally built property and matters related to rubbish collection were among the top grievances he receives.
“Billing and property rates are complicated issues for the City of Johannesburg and it’s a long-standing issue that refuses to go away. This is because when the 14 municipalities were amalgamated to form the metro they were using their own, different billing systems and these systems have to be integrated into a single system by collecting information and data for each household and that became a headache.
“In 2016, former mayor Herman Mashaba made pronouncements that this problem would be solved by December of that year but the problems still persist even today. It’s a legacy problem,” said Gumede.
He said uncollected rubbish and illegal dumping was a result of urbanisation that has resulted in many people flocking to the city for job opportunities and greener pastures.
“Areas like Mayfair, Cyrildene and Bruma Lake are cases in point because you have Chinese and people from other African countries who flock there for business and religious purposes. Now you end up having overcrowding in houses that were designed for a specific number of people.
“Because the city’s rubbish collection system is designed for a specific number of people, you then have a situation where rubbish from a single household is equivalent to rubbish from four houses,” said Gumede.
The ombudsman’s office normally takes complaints that surpassed the 90 days after they were reported to a relevant department. However, he said this rule could be overlooked depending on the urgency of the complaint.
His office is now working on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the city that will result in municipal employees being held accountable for promises they make to residents.
“For example, if a department promises to attend to a problem within three days, this MoU will make it mandatory for them to deliver on their promise within the stipulated days. In essence, the complainant can come to my office if the matter is not solved in three days and I have powers to hold that department and its manager to account,” said Gumede.
The MoU is likely to come into effect by the end of the year, he said.
The ombudsman's office can be reached on (010) 288-2802, WhatsApp line (081) 365-0225 or email: complaints@joburgombudsman.org.za
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