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Online tool helps track down ward councillors

Cape Town – As the local government elections near, a new online tool aims to help voters hold their representatives accountable.

The People’s Assembly parliamentary monitoring platform announced on Monday a website tool designed to help citizens connect with ward councillors.

This website differs to the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) “Who is my Ward Councillor?” web tool that requires that people know their Voting District number.

“The IEC provides only the generic phone number of the municipality and the regional office of the political party to which the councillor belongs, but not direct contact details,” a PMG spokesperson told Fin24 of the organisation’s platform.

The People’s Assembly's online tool, which has been optimised for mobile devices, lists phone numbers and email addresses of councillors as well as members of parliament for districts.

Do you think this tool will help with accountability? Let us know

“Out of the current 278 municipalities, only 16 have missing details and we hope to update these in the future. An interesting fact is that all municipalities have websites, but very few of them put up the contact numbers of the ward councillors. The metros are good about it, but only a few local municipalities,” the PMG representative added.

PMG said that 60% of its users identified themselves as Black African and 46% were under the age of 35. At least 44% said that information on the platform was useful in holding their MPs to account.

“People's Assembly also shows you what each Member of Parliament has been saying in Parliament, and whether they have been attending meetings that they are supposed to attend, in order to help you resolve your problems,” the PMG spokesperson said.

PMG said that MPs have demonstrated surprise at the committee monitoring tool which records minutes of meetings.

“The MPs are not used to being monitored as individuals. Each MP has a growing profile, showing their activity and their comments in Parliament - we believe that this must surely raise the bar on MP performance. Note that we have included only the three largest parties, since the small parties cannot fairly attend all committee meetings,” said the spokesperson.

The IEC will manage the elections on August 3. By April 26, there were 26 332 278 South Africans registered to vote.

Are you registered to vote? Download our Elections App for Android or iOS now to find out!


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