Most Parliamentary committees have been on oversight visits in the provinces to inspect offices of government departments and the state of the environment, housing, land transformation and so on. On these visits we often discover what is not working on the ground. The Labour Committee visited labour centres in the Free State. We discovered facilities that were largely clean and functional, but witnessed a huge amount of frustration with getting UIF claims processed and paid and Compensation Fund applications are often chaotic and much belaboured. The Department of Labour will have to do much better! Approximately 40 000 people claimed UIF in the past year in the Free State which gives some indication also of the Jobs being lost to the economy.

Inside Parliament the Protection of Information Bill negotiations continue unabated. The committee sits this week again to attempt to rework the text of this Bill into something acceptable. My colleagues Dean Smuts MP and David Maynier MP have done an incredible amount to get problematic and unconstitutional clauses removed from the legislation. The Right to Know (www.r2k.org.za) campaign have meanwhile been pushing public awareness of this apartheid era style legislation that the ruling party have been attempting to push through Parliament. The process in Parliament should be complete soon and we will be in a position to evaluate whether constitutional court action will be necessary to stop it. Watch this space.

Local Government Service Delivery

For those who did not get the election results, the DA received approximately 40% of the votes in Nelson Mandela Bay (PE), 39% of Tswane (Pretoria) and 35% of Johannesburg apart from winning most municipalities of the Western Cape outright or in coalition with COPE. We also won Midvaal in Gauteng and Baviaans. Bitou (Plett) is a lovely new addition to the DA.

Actual service deliver in Johannesburg continues to be a major problem. The billing crisis continues. I personally only received my electricity bill for my new home this week after trying to get it since April 2010. One constituent received an electricity bill for R1.7 Million on a residential property for 3 months worth of electricity. Financially the city is in a crisis state (watch more for details next month). The Debt level hovers at around R10 to R12 Billion, which is extremely high given the limited City income.

This week we are about to go into local government strike season again and will probably have garbage not collected. Brace yourselves.

Finally with regards to traffic calming and speed humps in Johannesburg, it appears that the system is cumbersome and ineffective. Each ward councilor is required to pick, in conjunction with the ward committee, 3 traffic calming interventions per year. The city then picks one per year per ward to implement. If your local school is not chosen, the City will simply not be prepared to implement the traffic calming. Contact your ward councilor in this regard. The only other option is for the local community to pay for it themselves with city engineer approval.

Useful contacts for service delivery courtesy of Cllr Tim Truluck:

• Joburg Water (water bursts, no water, sewer leaks, meter leaks, faulty meters, etc.) – send an email to customerservice@jwater.co.za or an SMS to 0826532143.

• City Power (no power, intermittent power, street lights not working, meter faults) – visit www . citypower . co . za and click “Fault Logging”. Obviously you may not be able get online when there is a power failure so I suggest you register for the SMS/WAP version of the website before you need to make use of it.

• Joburg Roads Agency (potholes, street signs, traffic signals etc) – send an email to hotline@jra.org.za

• Revenue Queries (incorrect account’s, non-receipt of account etc) – you HAVE to call the call centre first on 011-375-5555 (Sorry). City Councillors need your fault logging reference # to take up a query for a resident. You can emailstatements@joburg.org.za but I suggest rather calling.

Law Enforcement (traffic violations, noise, dumping, motor vehicle accidents, vagrants causing fires in open parks etc) - call the emergency call centre on 011 375 5911.

I write Opinion pieces for the online magazine www.dailymaverick.co.za View the articles there.

You will also find extensive video and mp3 sound clips of speeches and debates onwww.ianollis.com

Until next month

Regards

Your MP

Ian M. Ollis