Imali Yethu Social Audit News
From the 27th of September to the 5th of October, the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), in partnership with Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) will be carrying out a social audit of solid waste removal services in Khayelitsha. The main goal of this exercise is to assess to what extent the services rendered by the City through its contractors (solid waste disposers) are proficient – meaning if people are getting value for the public money which the City is spending. This includes and analysis of both the financial expenditure and the actual service output. This is a way of ensuring government accountability in expenditure of public funds.
Kahyelitsha Sanitation Protest by the Social Justice Coalition
Two experts Sowmya Kidambi, a Social Development Specialist and Vivek Ramkumar, the Director of International Advocacy and the Open Budget Initiative, who are both members of the International Budget Partnership (IBP) are the facilitators for the training of trainers in preparation of the social audit and are overseers of the whole process.
The first two days, 27th and 28th of September were allocated for the training of trainers, who consist of a group of about 17 individuals. During this period, these trainers are equipped with the appropriate thinking process, analysis skills – including the extraction of critical information from the documents obtained from the City of Cape Town, the drafting of the questionnaires, training of the task team consisting of 100 community members who will go out with the survey and actual physical verification, and collation of information from the community.
Following the collation of data, it is then processed into a preliminary report for the public hearing on the 5th of October where the findings are shared with community members, city officials and other interested parties. The findings will also include experiences from the community witnesses. A platform will be given for grievances to be aired by the community members. The City of Cape Town officials are also given the opportunity to respond.
This will be followed by a formal social audit report to be published within a week after the conclusion of the social audit. The process does not end there but only when the City rectifies the adverse observations are addressed. Even after such a scenario, a constant monitoring procedure is ensued to ensure consistency in service delivery.
