15 Jul 2014

Tutume Sub-district recently took its community service initiative to Kutamogoree where different departments explained to the residents what they offer.

In an interview, the sub-council’s public relations officer, Ms Nikita Rathedi said that they had decided to embark on a community service day in different areas under their jurisdiction. 

She said the aim of the community service day was to take different services provided to the people in areas where there were no council offices. 

She said only important departments or those that people visited mostly to get assistance such as SHAA, commercial, bye-Law, S&CD and environment health took part in the service day.

Ms Rathedi said they had observed that some people were not able to get the help they needed in time because they stayed in areas where there were no council offices.

She said the day was started by going around the village doing clean-ups then attended a Kgotla meeting to explain to the village elders the objective of the event.

After the meeting, she said different departments put up stalls and people go around asking questions about the services provided by the departments.

She stated that people were given pamphlets and booklets explaining services found in different departments. 

Furthermore, Ms Rathedi said the other benefit of the day was that villagers were given an opportunity to market their businesses. 

She explained that they were pleased with the attendance even though women attended more than men.
They managed to get positive feedback about the way they provided services to the people and the information will assist the council to make improvements where necessary.

The PRO said that the only problem they encountered was that the stalls giving out freebies were the only ones visited in large numbers and this should not be the case.

She said people should take this opportunity to get information from different departments to improve their lives and not just to get freebies.

Ms Rathedi said people were also told about the toll free number so that they could call to make any inquiries in future.

She called on more men to attend the day in future and thanked council employees for compassionately making the event a success. ENDS