Zuma hotline a failure - DA

2010-01-15 14:15

Johannesburg - The presidential hotline has failed the DA, its Parliamentary leader Athol Trollip argued on Friday.

"Calls made to the hotline have revealed that none of the complaints we registered with the hotline in 2009 have been resolved," he said.

Of the complaints made by the DA, 55% were still logged as "under investigation", 18% had to be re-logged and reopened as new cases, 18% were no longer logged on the hotline system, and nine percent had been referred back to the DA with the request that "we deal with it ourselves".

Hotline operators had been unable to give any information about the complaints still under investigation, even though some of these were lodged more than four months ago, Trollip said.

'No urgency'

"It is clear that there is absolutely no urgency on the part of the ANC government to address complaints from the public."

He said two DA complaints about incomplete RDP houses in Limpopo were registered as "resolved" without the party receiving any feedback from the department of human settlements.

"Subsequent visits to these RDP housing developments have revealed that no improvements have been made to date and we have therefore had to re-log these complaints as new cases.

"This means that the process has had to start all over again, nearly three months after we first registered our complaints, while the people living in these houses have continued to suffer as a result of the department of human development dragging its feet."

Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane had said there were tracking and monitoring mechanisms in place to evaluate performance.

"It appears from our experiences with the hotline that these tracking and monitoring systems and various channels of engagement are nothing more than a figment of Chabane's imagination," Trollip said.

Hotline administration moved

He said administration of the hotline was recently moved from the Government Communications and Information System to Chabane so it could be integrated into his ministry’s monitoring and evaluation work.

The DA hoped the move would change the way in which the hotline was operated and that Chabane would use the opportunity to demonstrate his seriousness in holding cabinet members and department officials accountable for their actions and failures.

Trollip said the DA would formally ask Chabane for details of what had been done about each of its complaints and whether any officials had been held accountable for the problems plaguing the hotline.

The DA would continue to monitor the presidential hotline in 2010 and would report back on the situation, he said.

- SAPA