According to the Deputy Director-General in the Office of the Premier, Gugulethu Matlaopane, this outreach programme is the first of its kind. The programme is aimed at addressing service delivery issues within the Northern Cape by having one-on-one sessions with members of the community across all municipalities. Matlaopane further added that the outreach programme will be scheduled on a monthly basis until they have rotated across all the districts in the province.

“This is the first [programme] of its kind. We started with this municipality and we are going to all other municipalities in the Northern Cape. The goal of this programme is that the premier is inculcating civil servants that the days of sitting in the office and waiting for communities to come to the government are over. It is now time that we go out to the communities and understand whether what we do as a government is reaching the community,” Matlaopane says.

According to the statement, community members will be able to access government services such as Home Affairs, Sassa, Social Development, Labour, as well as the Local Municipality. Matlaopane told OFM News that each and every issue raised by individuals or individual groups will be captured and addressed according to their urgency and difficulty. She also added that the Premier has devised a tracking tool to track issues raised by the community members in order to address these in an effective and timely fashion.

OFM News/Bambatha Giko