AFTER an infuriating week of queueing for hours and being affected by loadshedding in Council controlled offices, I wondered if our executive mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis has ever tried to renew his driver’s licence and or re-register a car at one of his City’s facilities.
My experience is hardly unique as my fellow queuers will testify.
My driver’s licence renewal experience went like this:
My nearest licencing office is Milnerton, near the fire station, off the Koeberg Road. Some friends advised that they had had a good experience there when they went along in the early afternoon.
Silly me, I didn’t check the loadshedding schedule and arrived there after a 18km drive from home, 15 minutes before scheduled loadshedding at 14:00. I wondered why there was no queue… But why no standby power?
So a wasted 1½h journey and R72.00 in petrol.
Next day, I went again, this time mid-morning and had better luck only to fail the eye test after queuing for about an hour. “Go and have your eyes tested by an optician and get a certificate “I was told – which I duly did and unsurprisingly passed with flying colours, at a cost of R99.00.
Back to the licensing department for the third time and the excitement was palpable! Papers now sorted and in the payment queue with about 30 others playing musical chairs as the conga line edged towards the payment kiosks, of which there are seven but alas only three are manned.
Well, This time I almost made it didn’t we? To paraphrase the song, but face to face with the cashier and the lights go out – loadshedding again and you guessed it, no back-up power, so “come back in two and half hours, or as that takes us past tjaila at 15:30, tomorrow”.
Next day I cracked it – back in the conga line and managed to pay and receive a receipt from the same lady who advised it could take six weeks to receive my license. Still only three kiosks open out of seven, but I now have the answer. Upon enquiring why there was no back-up power after 15 years of loadshedding, I received an incredulous stare “Are you stupid or something?” was written all over her smiling face.
She aurally confided that two of the pay kiosks were to be turned into ‘generating rooms to house the invertors for solar power, but that hadn’t happened yet and no one knew when that was likely…’. But what about the other two I wondered, another two cashiers would increase throughput by 66%!
A similar story awaited me at the other licensing department, for motor car registrations and rates queries in Table Bay Mall, this only 9,3km from home.
An impressive 19 kiosks are provided in this modern facility but alas less than half were manned, meaning that I had to wait 2½h before my number was called.
Now you don’t have to be a rocket scientist Mr. Mayor, to fix this problem which cost me at least R360 in petrol and a whole frustrating working day of +8h to complete simple tasks that should have been able to be completed on-line, it is 2023 after all.
And why hasn’t the Milnerton licensing department been equipped with back-up power after 15 years of load shedding? Losing at least 2h of productive working time for each employee there, each time there is a loadshedding event must be costing the Council – i.e. the ratepayer, hundreds of thousands of Rands in lost productivity. And what about the punters? Even on a good day, with no glitches and loadshedding, 3h must be a conservative amount of time, X thousands of people – time lost to the economy must be enormous, and that’s just from one licensing office in what has been described as the most progressive, efficient and enlightened City in the whole country!
Eish.
