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Joe Mcgluwa, the ID National Organiser, has slammed what he terms ‘the ongoing confusion and inefficiency' surrounding the 17737 Presidential Hotline, which went live at 09H00 this morning.

‘First the 1 September launch of the Hotline was delayed because furniture hadn't yet arrived at the office and now I am either greeted with a pre-recorded message from the President, or the phone goes dead,' Mr Mcgluwa says.

‘This has really been a bumpy start for a mechanism that was designed to improve service delivery and make public representatives more accountable to our people, but has instead gone through one crisis after another.

‘Somewhere someone is not doing their job properly,' says Mcgluwa.

‘While we welcome the establishment of the Hotline, it must also be kept in mind that its creation is to a fair extent an indictment on the hundreds of ANC Councillors who have failed to service ratepayers properly in the first place.

‘Had these councillors executed their responsibilities properly in the first place, there would have been no need to spend over R4million on this project,' Mcgluwa says.

‘It is our hope that the establishment of the Hotline will eventually contribute towards exposing the many "absentee" councillors, thus improving service delivery and reducing the recent wave of service delivery protests.

‘We in the Independent Democrats also remain concerned that in its current form the Hotline will mostly benefit only those in the urban areas and will offer no hope to the rural poor, who bear the brunt of Government's poor service delivery record, because it will only be toll free from landlines,' says Mcgluwa.