Abstract
The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of residents staying in suburbs and townships regarding the service delivered by a municipality under administration. The South African literature shows that residents in different locations behave differently when they receive poor service delivery from municipalities. Internationally, service delivery by municipalities has been measured using two research instruments. The research design was a survey and the sample size was 522 respondents. The convenient sampling technique was used to select them. The primary data were collected via face-to-face interviews, and a validated services perception (SERVPERF) questionnaire, developed by Cronin and Taylor, was adapted and used to collect data. The main finding of the study was that residents in the townships did not organize themselves and voice their dissatisfaction by embarking on protests, and they significantly agreed (Odds ratio = 0.54; P = 0.005; 95 confidence interval = 0.3516; 0.8279), more than the suburbs residents, that in the past eight months the service had improved. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and implications for municipal managers. Keywords: Hirschman theory, service delivery, SERVPERF, suburbs and townships residents. JEL Classification: M31
Highlights
There is available legislation that guides municipalities in terms of rendering services to communities
The purpose of the study was to compare the perceptions of suburbs and townships residents with regard to services rendered by a municipality under administration
It was found that municipalities in South Africa did not have employees who can handle technical problems
Summary
There is available legislation that guides municipalities in terms of rendering services to communities. Despite the promulgation of legislation to provide excellent service delivery in South Africa, there are reasons for municipalities not rendering services as expected This has resulted in them being negatively perceived by residents. In terms of the latter, Khale and Worku (2013) found that municipal employees lacked the technical skills required to render effective services, such as artisan work, engineering and town planning. In another study, it emerged that employees did not have skills that enabled them to treat residents with care (Danzi & Danzi, 2010). Corruption and political appointments were other reasons for municipalities not performing as expected (Khale & Worku, 2013; Tshishonga, 2014)
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