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The DA notes the Community Service Ombudsman Scheme (CSOS) decision to summarily suspend walk-ins at all of their offices due to the rising Covid-19 levels.

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many businesses, corporations and organisations to rethink how their operations are conducted, ensuring that as far as possible, measures are put in place to safeguard the health and wellbeing of employees and the public.

Whilst businesses across the country have developed plausible safety measures to protect employees and the public while the country is on level 3,  CSOS has simply elected to jump straight back to level 5 lockdown and shut its doors.

This can only be viewed as a convenient excuse for them to do the bare minimum while the rest of the country is hard at work saving lives and livelihoods.

The CSOS has a key role in regulating the conduct of parties within community schemes such as sectional title‚ homeowners’ associations‚ retirement housing schemes‚ share block companies and housing.

They are mandated to perform critical work, especially in light of the government’s ban on evictions.

This closure will now have a direct impact on the level of access that South African’s have to this critical state service.

This will create avoidable and unnecessary administrative challenges to an organisation already reeling due to many challenges of inefficiency.

We call on Minister Lindiwe Sisulu to urgently intervene in ensuring that CSOS does not continue to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse for poor service to its clients.

Issued by The DA