Don’t take to the streets, rather e-mail your gripes
Gauteng hopes to move away from street protests to e-mailed petitions that are properly considered for action.
|||Johannesburg - Gauteng hopes to move away from street protests to e-mailed petitions that are properly considered for action.
Every week there are further protests, many carried out by people who feel their complaints have been ignored and they have no other means of getting the authorities' attention.
Gauteng has had a law allowing petitions about complaints for more than a decade, but has only now finally set up the detailed procedures on how to get your petition heard.
This month, the Gauteng legislature issued for public comment a draft set of regulations on submitting petitions. Comments may be made to the Office of the Secretary in the Legislature until April 29.
If the regulations are passed, they will allow for petitions to be sent to the legislature by post, by hand delivery, by fax, or by “electronic and social platforms”, which include e-mail, or via the legislature's website.
Petitions must be recorded on an official form, which is attached to the regulations.
This form requires information such as the name, address and ID number of the petitioner, a statement of complaint and an indication of what the petitioner would like the legislature to do.
The regulations also encourage a resolution of the complaints.
They must be logged on a central register, be assigned an official to process them and sent to the legislature's petitions committee.
Petitioners must be told what has happened to their complaints and, if the committee rejects them, they are entitled to a written explanation for this.
The committee secretary must conduct a preliminary investigation into the petition complaint within 10 days of registering the petition, and the committee secretary has the power to subpoena people to appear before the committee to answer questions.
After the preliminary investigation, the committee secretary has seven working days to submit the petition to the Speaker of the legislature, and the Speaker then refers the matter to the committee for consideration and adoption.
The committee must consider and deal with petitions referred by the Speaker and must tell the petitioner the outcome within four weeks of the matter being adopted by the committee.
The regulations are in terms of the Gauteng Petitions Act of 2002, which provides for the general principle of allowing petitions to be submitted to the legislature.
louise.flanagan@inl.co.za
The Star