The Ballito Licensing Office, situated in Nokukhanya Luthuli Place in Ballito, is intended to render services to the public, including KwaDukuza residents who wish to renew their licences. The service received from this office is dismal and an insult to the people of KwaDukuza: 

• there are long waiting times and numerous unexplained closures / service interruptions of this office  
• disinterested and rude staff members (no sense of what a customer centric approach is or desire to adopt such an approach)

To make matters worse, there is a large waiting area inside the building that can accommodate a number of the waiting public in a safe, sheltered and climate controlled environment - despite this members of the public, including old / infirmed people and pregnant women are told by the Pro Secure security guard on duty that only one customer is allowed in at a time. We now have accounts of pensioners sitting in the baking son, in the middle of a heatwave, for hours on end just to have a car licence renewed. There are also accounts of there not being enough chairs outside and that a 79 year old woman was expected to sit on the floor while waiting. There is another account of an old man who fell out of his chair from heat exhaustion, with no one at this office assisting. 

When waiting members of the public protest, they are told by the officious security guard (not an employee of the KwaDukuza Municipality) that there are strict instructions from the management of this licence office to only allow in one person at a time, as allowing in more people would make it "too noisy" for the poor licencing officials to work. As such the security guard and municipal employees sit in the comfort of a cool, airconditioned and quiet office, while the public must "line up outside", praying that they may be served during the day. 

KwaDukuza Licensing, and the Community Safety Department it forms part of, must remember that the very public it serves (or should serve) pays for their offices, the airconditioning in those offices, all the equipment and stationary they use and, of course, the salaries of each of the employees working there (including the salary of the rude and officious Pro-Secure security guard making sure the public stay outside, lined up for hours). 

One must wonder what Chief Albert Luthuli and Mama Nokukhanya Luthuli (who the Ballito Municipal Offices is named after and dedicated to) would think if they had to visit these offices today, just to find that pensioners and other vulnerable people are treated with such disrespect and disdain by the very employees of the KwaDukuza employees who have been employed to serve them.     

The DA Ward Councilor for Ward 30 has repeatedly raised this matter with the Executive Director for Community Safety, Cecil Viramuthu, over many months, with ongoing undertakings from him that this ongoing insult and injustice will be addressed. Nevertheless, it continues unabated... 

WE DEMAND IMMEDIATE ACTION - OPEN THE BALLITO LICENSING OFFICE TO THE PUBLIC, EVEN IF JUST FOR VULNERABLE OLD / INFIRMED PEOPLE OR PREGNANT WOMEN - WE, THE RESIDENTS OF KWADUKUZA, OWN THAT BUILDING. THE EMPLOYEES WHO WORK THERE DO NOT!