The culture of non-payment of services by communities, rendered by local authorities in the North West : Mmabatho City Council

Abstract

The study attempted to determine the attitudes towards the services provided by the Mmabatho City Council, community participation towards municipality service delivery. A convenience sample of 140 households was selected from Mmabatho, with a response rate of (100) 71.3%. Specifically, heads of households were targeted as main respondents in this study. Several hypotheses were tested. It was found that generally the results show that residents of Mmabatho are willing to pay for services despite the high levels of dissatisfaction with these services. The research showed that there is a relationship between the way respondents perceived the quality of service rendered by the Council and the respondents' feelings of satisfaction concerning those services. It was further discovered that there are a number of steps that the local government can embark on in order to improve the situation in their area. The most important issue is that the local stakeholders should draw up the campaign so that local issues can be addressed. Several recommendations based on the literature and the empiral investigation was made in an attempt to address these problems. In an effort to alleviate this problem it was found that attention should be given to awareness campaigns, involvement of consumers in local workshops, etc.