Weary Joburgers losing faith in city's promises

Intro: Most households and businesses in Johannesburg believe service delivery is getting worse, says a confidential report by the Bureau of Market Research.

The annual customer satisfaction survey, used by the City of Johannesburg for planning and for performance management, was presented at the mayoral lekgotla late last year but was kept secret.

More than 3000 households and 750 businesses in the city’s informal settlements, suburbs, formal townships and the inner city were polled.

The picture the survey paints is of declining confidence and declining satisfaction with basic household and business services.

Many respondents felt that the city was not communicating and interacting sufficiently with them on planning and budgeting.

Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo cites the revitalisation of the inner city and investments in infrastructure, especially the tarring of roads in Soweto, as some of his proudest achievements — but the survey reveals that residents and businesses believe that development is too slow, especially in housing, job creation and safety.

The pollsters said the survey was made a month after last year’s local government elections, when the voting public’s awareness of the failures of municipal service delivery was heightened.

This “could have contributed to the lower satisfaction ratings as compared with 2005”.

The survey’s findings suggest that the city should reconsider some of its priorities.

Fewer than half of the business and household respondents were satisfied with the performance of the city, a decrease of eight percentage points on the 2005 figure.

Crime has become an increasing concern for both groups, which believe that law enforcement and safety services are deteriorating.

Only one in 10 respondents felt safe living in Johannesburg.

The report said: “A comparison of the 2006 and 2005 figures confirms a significant change in the perception of safety in the City of Johannesburg. Householders feeling unsafe increased from 19,2% to 27,7%.

“This reflects a substantial deterioration in the safety situation as a whole.”

Only one in five of the business respondents said they felt safe trading in Johannesburg.

The top five concerns of Johannesburg households have been unchanged for four years: unemployment, crime, HIV-AIDS, housing and healthcare.

A comparison of last year’s findings with those of previous years reveals, however, that though unemployment continues to top the list, crime has moved into second place from fourth in 2005. HIV-AIDS dropped to third position from second in 2005, and housing and health care have remained in the last two positions.

Slightly more than half the respondents, 50,7%, believe that there is a significant amount of corruption in Johannesburg.

Most residents believe property rates are excessive.

The only area in which the city appears to have its residents’ vote is in community services — in particular, the recreation centres, theatres, museums, libraries and cemeteries.

Satisfaction with the metro bus services has increased.

Confidence in the city, and the proportion of people approving the levels of service it offers, differs from one region to another. Inner city residents are particularly dissatisfied with municipal service delivery. More than a third, 34,1%, of them rate delivery as “poor” or “very poor”.

Households in Ennerdale, Orange Farm and southern Johannesburg expressed high dissatisfaction.

In contrast, Diepsloot, Diepkloof and Meadowlands residents recorded the most satisfaction, followed by Soweto.

A comparison of the 2005 and 2006 scores confirms that there has been a decline in satisfaction with all basic municipal services, with the exception of water and electricity reticulation.

The largest drop in satisfaction related to the maintenance of roads and stormwater drains.

Surprisingly, residents had a high level of confidence in the city’s ability to provide them with a good quality of life relative to other cities. Three in five of the respondents were confident on this score.

Of the business respondents, only 50,8% expressed their confidence in the city as a business location, markedly fewer than the 63,1% of the 2005 survey.

Informal businesses and large formal businesses have the most confidence, followed by small formal and medium formal businesses. Businessmen rate business development in the city in 2006 as inferior to that of 2005.

For this sector, crime is seen as the biggest problem, followed by unemployment.

Business agrees that roads should be given urgent attention, but rates most municipal services, and water provision in particular, as good. The ratings are, however, down on those for 2005.

Litter control, street cleaning and traffic lights are the only aspects of its activities on which the council scored better last year than in 2005 .

One in five businesses is concerned about the city’s ability to control land invasions and almost one in three report dissatisfaction with efforts to control street trading.

One in six respondents expressed dissatisfaction with building controls, with 81,4% of them citing inadequate enforcement of building regulations. They said this resulted in structurally inferior buildings, dilapidated buildings and the erection of dwellings in open spaces.

Business Day - Chantelle Benjamin