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The City of Cape Town’s Corporate Call Centre is at the coal-face of delivery. Good government is about delivering services to all and making sure that a local government’s administration is always working to serve the needs of the people. However, it is also about listening and responding to people’s needs.

Listening is not just about crafting a policy. It is also about dealing with people’s issues, problems and queries as they arise. Only by being immediately responsive can we truly claim to be a government that always serves the needs of the people first.

The City of Cape Town’s Call Centre is one of the places where the DA administration listens to the needs of citizens and arranges responses and actions as they are needed. Located in the Civic Centre, the centre is one of several.

Handling approximately 1,2 million calls a year, all calls are answered and dealt with in one of three languages. The range of calls includes queries about:
Finance
Revenue
Valuations
Solid waste
Water
Electricity
Motor vehicle registration
Traffic
Accounts payable
General enquiries
Campaigns
Of the total, 80% of all calls received are finance related while the remaining 20% are service related. With the exception of vehicle and traffic related calls, which are routed to a separate centre, all calls are logged and monitored. Once the agents have concluded the call, progress on each query is tracked until the query has been concluded and the problem finally resolved.

Such centres are one of the hallmarks of good government. Efficient administration means being able to respond to problems as they arise. While good planning plays a role in the management of a city, every day brings with it new challenges for individuals, to which we must always be responsive.

By being adaptable and following up on peoples’ issues, the DA administration is ensuring that there is never any divide between citizens and the administration that is meant to serve them. Dealing with people’s problems should never just be a phenomenon of election years. This call centre and the others in Cape Town are proof that, for the DA, good government is a roll-out that happens each and every day.