More than a year after its inception, the Presidential Hotline is training public liaison officers for its Eastern Cape unit.
The hotline was established by President Jacob Zuma as a service to ensure citizens have easier access to the Presidency, and to enable greater interactivity.
“As part of President Jacob Zuma's directive to create an interactive, accessible and responsive government to service delivery hiccups, the Eastern Cape Presidential Hotline unit, within the office of the premier, has vigorously responded to this directive by training 55 public liaison officers,” says the Eastern Cape provincial government.
Deputy director-general Litha Geza emphasises that the Presidential Hotline is not something new, but “an extension of the customer care unit that will utilise the intelligence of the dedicated public servants who are capable to carry out this mammoth task.
“The officials received training on the investigation of citizen complaints reported to the hotline and they will also have the responsibility of following up the public enquiries and complaints lodged and ensure that all are attended to efficiently.”
The Democratic Alliance (DA) says that, after a year of being operational, the Presidential Hotline is no more than a testament to ANC failure.
The Presidency cites a major challenge of the hotline as the need to obtain quicker responses from government departments and provinces.
“To resolve this problem, and in keeping with the president's call to create a government that works faster, harder and smarter to respond to the needs of the people, the president decided to make directors-general responsible for resolving the queries and complaints in their departments.”
Trollip agrees that this is the critical point in the failure of the hotline. “No matter how well equipped or well funded the hotline is, if those government departments to whom cases are referred to be resolved are not working efficiently, the hotline is little more than a government PR machine.”
In its first year of operation, the hotline was allocated almost R12 million of state funds, according to the DA.
The party adds that, despite this expenditure, the hotline has made little impact on improving South Africans' experiences of dealing with government.
“Instead of investing more state funds into this failed initiative, President Zuma's government should focus on improving service delivery in all spheres of government,” says Trollip.
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