RURAL HOUSEHOLD’S SATISFACTION WITH ACCESS TO BASIC SERVICES IN LEPELLE-NKUMPI LOCAL MUNICIPALITY, LIMPOPO PROVINCE

Year 2019, , 49 - 63, 17.06.2019

Makalela K.ı. Asha A.a

https://doi.org/10.34109/ijefs.201911104

Cited By: 2

Abstract

The decline in public service satisfaction is one of the challenges that democratic
South Africa faces. Many municipalities in South Africa have been experiencing
difficulties due to poor service delivery. The South African local communities
often express their dissatisfaction with municipal service delivery by means of
protests. The purpose of this paper is to investigate rural household’s satisfaction
with access to basic services in the Lepelle Nkumpi municipality, Limpopo
province. This research adopted a descriptive survey research design and a
standardised questionnaire was used to collect data from 80 participants who were
selected randomly. The finding reveals that most of the sample households have
access to the services rendered by the municipality, such as water, sanitation and
electricity. The municipality has extended its provision of basic services to the
rural households. The finding further shows that the majority of the sample
households have expressed their dissatisfaction with service provision. The
service delivery challenges faced by the municipality include frequent water cutoffs, aged water taps, stolen water pipes and non-existent refuse removal. The
municipality is struggling with backlogs due to a shortage of resources, lack of
capacity and improper targeting. It is recommended that the municipality should
accelerate water provisions inside the dwelling/yard and there should be a
mechanism to respond immediately to water faults as well as a need for regular
monitoring and maintenance. The municipality should apply the electrical subsidy
to indigent households, impose heavy fines on illegal connections and electrify
new settlements. Regarding sanitation service, the municipality should provide
sanitation by using quality material for building toilets and put in place a mechanism for regular monitoring and upgrading of dilapidated toilets. It is also
suggested that the municipality should enhance its institutional capacity to address
the aforementioned challenges to accelerate the provision of basic services to the
rural households.

Keywords

Service delivery, Access, household’s satisfaction, Rural, Municipality

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