By The Knysna Bulldog
ONCE upon a time municipalities worked really hard. They had teams of meter readers who visited every property once a month to read the electricity meters and another team to read the water meters.
Then there were teams of clerks who would take the readings, enter them on pre-printed account forms, write or type in the address and put them into window envelopes and post them.
Somehow they never thought of getting the same man to read both meters so that the clerks could produce a combined water and electricity account and save on postage and envelopes.
And then the payments would flow in to the cash offices and the cheques would arrive by post and that meant even more work because the money and cheques had to be banked and the clerks had to keep records and balance their books. Then they had to chase up the bad payers and collect debts.
Rates accounts were handled the same way and the municipalities even had their own staff to do property valuations.
Now, of course, we pay cash in advance for electricity at the local supermarket and the money is magically transferred to the municipality by computer. It is never touched by a municipal hand.
So here’s the big mystery. Why do municipalities continue to grow when there is less work to do?
Administrative jobs like clerks, shorthand typists and messengers have disappeared. Remember the messengers who spent all day moving files from OUT baskets to IN baskets? Desk top computers have replaced all these jobs and municipalities no longer have to print accounts or pay postage. We actually pay to receive the accounts by e-mail and print them out at our own cost. EFT’s mean no municipal official has to get out of his or her chair and walk to the bank. Ever!
And then there are a whole lot of things municipalities no longer have to do. Remember when all road-worthy certificates were issued by municipalities and you had to take a day’s leave to queue for your turn? The situation became impossible so a simple franchise system was developed and the problem was solved. Now we have a daily service and, of course, less work for the municipality.
Why can’t we do the same thing for the renewal of car licences? And even driver’s licences? New Zealand has a franchise system with standards set by the AA. The result is a seven-day service so youngsters can even do their learner driver tests on a Sunday.
But, far more important, the standards are consistent and fewer people die in car accidents. In South Africa driving test standards vary from one good municipality to a bad one. We pay the price for this with more than a thousand deaths a month on our roads.