February 14, 2003
By Thomas Thale
A DELEGATION from the City of eThekwini is in town to learn from Joburg, the art of managing a city in a rapidly changing environment.
According to Harvey Phalatse, external liason specialist for the City of Johannesburg's Visitors and Resource Centre, the visitors from eThekwini will spend the whole of Friday in the city, "engaging relevant officials and observing what systems we have in place".
Sipho Cele, the deputy manager of the eThekwini council and also head of the delegation, said they are here to learn how the city had reorganised its administrative structures in such a short space of time. "We want to understand the philosophical underpinnings of transformation as it has unfolded in Joburg. We also want to see how this informs operational issues, and in this regard, we would like to observe the workings of People's Centres, customer service centres and the call centre."
Phalatse said many towns and cities across the country consider Joburg to be a model of good governance because "we have moved ahead on transformation. The whole administration has been successfully restructured, the city has 11 operational regions, and they are all functional. They see Joburg as a model, and come here to observe how the city functions".
The delegation from eThekwini council
The delegates will attend presentations in the centre before visiting the Region Six Peoples' Centre and the Call Centre later in the afternoon.
eThekwini is the latest in a long list of delegations to be hosted by the Visitors and Resources Centre since the centre was established in September last year. The centre has played host to high profile delegations from cities such as London, Birmingham, Bulawayo, Cape Town and Mangaung. Other visitors to the city have been parliamentarians and potential investors.
Carmel Joseph, knowledge specialist at the centre, said that a programme is always "arranged around the needs of delegations". It is the responsibility of the resources centre to develop a tailor made programme for visiting delegations. The purpose of hosting such delegations, Joseph explained, is to "share with other municipalities experiences and institutional models".
