Legislature takes operation lokisa to the streets

07 November 2017

 

Next time Joburgers take the Rea Vaya bus going to work, they could be seated next to the City of Joburg’s Transport Committee Chairperson and officials, who would be monitoring what kind of service commuters receive.

 

Recently, the Chairperson of Section 79 Transport Committee, Councillor Tyrell Meyers, accompanied by the Chair of Chairs, Councillor Alex Christians, the Chairperson of Section 79 Safety Committee, Councillor Hilton Masera and the officials; made a surprise visit to the inner-city BRT stations, queued and rode on the buses like ordinary residents.

The City has stepped up its efforts to ensure that, service delivery issues raised by residents are attended to speedily and proactively, by launching Operation Lokisa. Lokisa is a Sotho word, which means to fix or sort out. The operation would see Chairpersons of different committees performing regular oversight on departments and entities which are tasked with providing services to the residents.

As part of the oversight, councillors, namely, Meyers, Christians and Masera, made an unannounced visit to a number of BRT bus stations in Johannesburg central business district during the morning rush hour on Friday (3 November 2017).

The purpose of the visit was to see for themselves first-hand, the issues around the buses’ travel schedules, BRT lanes, accessing tickets, safety and customer service amongst other issues. “After listening to a heart-wrenching story of a customer complaining about the BRT service in the inner-city, I decided to invite other chairpersons within my cluster to go on a surprise pre-oversight visit to see for ourselves what the issues are,” says Meyers. Councillor Meyers had also invited the complainant, Tinyiko Masemola, to join his team on the pre-oversight visit to the BRT stations. 

“Residents should expect to see more of these oversight visits, where we would be arriving unannounced at different service stations interacting with residents to get their views about what they are experiencing,” says Meyers.Councillor Masera says the biggest worry for him, is seeing the BRT lanes being used by taxis and other vehicles thus hampering the smooth traffic flow in the inner-city, which leads to a lot of commuters arriving late at work and affecting productivity.

Councillor Christians, who used the BRT bus for the first time, says after riding on the bus and interacting with commuters, they would write a report to the Leader of Business in the Council about the issues that need urgent attention.