LETTER: Delays are not about red tape
Something more constructive needs to be done to assist the City of Cape Town than merely to bash its institutions
After more than 30 years as a professional project manager in the built environment, I am not of the opinion that the delays experienced in the approval of projects have much to do with so-called red tape or a general lack of competence among City of Cape Town officials. The problem has become the need to manage the city’s limited resources from outside its organisation without the benefit of a clear understanding of process, protocol and policy. I am not aware of any service in any industry where it is required of the purchaser to manage the entire process of procurement and logistics from outside the service provider’s organisation. Such a scenario from a commercial point of view would be bizarre. One may think that the solution is merely a redesign of the city’s organisational structure, with case officers appropriately empowered and charged with the responsibility to ensure the safe and efficient passage of each application received, and one would be right. The city shoul...
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