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February 2015
News
W
ith theDepartment of Higher
Education acknowledging
that there is a significant
lack of student accommodation, Min-
ister Blade Nzimande says plans are
underway to build additional capac-
ity at tertiary institutions. According
toCraigMcMurray, CEOof Respublica,
one of South Africa’s leading devel-
oper of student accommodation,
governments allocation of R1,6 bil-
lion for student accommodation,
together with universities funding of
approximately R700million, will only
be sufficient to deliver an additional
9 000 beds by 2016. “This is not even
T
he centreoperates 24x7and the
operators handle an average of
132 000 calls a month or 4 400
every day. In spite of this high number
of incoming phone calls, at least 90%
are answered within 15 seconds or
less. Even on the busiest day of the
year – 16 December 2014 – when the
TIC answered nearly 9 000 calls within
a 24-hour time period, the average
waiting time was just 12 seconds for
each caller.
Generally speaking, Mondays and
Fridays are the busiest weekdays at
the TIC and Saturdays are the busiest
days of the month, with the highest
call volumes between 8 amand 4 pm.
‘The TIC is pivotal in ensuring that
we are a well-run city. The centre’s
performance is outstanding and
the call centre operators must be
applauded. It takes a special type
of person and some stamina to do
this job, especially if one considers
that the operators have only three
seconds breathing space between
calls,’ said the City’s Mayoral Com-
mittee Member: Transport for Cape
Town, Brett Herron.
Callers can be assisted in any of
the province’s three official languag-
es, Afrikaans, English or isiXhosa and
according to the TIC’s customer sta-
tistics, most prefer English. The ma-
jority of calls relate to queries about
public transport timetables, routes,
fares and service disruptions across
all modes of scheduled public trans-
port in the city –MyCiTi bus service,
Cape Metrorail, Golden Arrow Bus
Services and Dial-a-Ride. Transport
for Cape Town (TCT) is also respon-
sible for the city’s road network of
10 629 km. Residents therefore report
potholes and faulty traffic lights or
lodge complaints pertaining to road
maintenance and storm water with
the TIC call centre operators. Using
Google Maps, the call centre opera-
tors are able to locate the nearest TCT
area depot, which then passes the
report onto the responsible crew to
resolve the complaint or to fix the
pothole. Herron says, “TCT relies on
city residents to be our eyes and ears
on the ground, be it on a MyCiTi bus
or in a private vehicle on our road
network. We can only improve our
service and our roads if you tell us
about the shortcomings.”
■
Transport centre receives 4 400 calls daily
TheTransport InformationCentre
(TIC), hosted at the City of Cape
Town’s Transport Management
Centre inGoodwood, is the nerve
cord for all transport-related
queries and complaints in the
city.
enough to accommodate one third
of the new student enrolments, let
alone deal with the backlog. Consid-
ering the limited resources from gov-
ernment anduniversities, it is impera-
tive that all parties engage far more
meaningfully with the private sector
to help alleviate the shortage.”
■
Shortage of student
accommodation