Ghanzi district turns to toll free no# to service rads

Staff Writer | Monday June 8, 2015 14:25

Their Customer Service Centre, the first of its kind by a district council in the country, is manned by a multi-lingual local people who take calls from the diverse language groupings of the Ghanzi as they call about services.

The toll free numbers were introduced to enable the community members to call and lodge complaints or queries without having to travel long distances to seek help in Ghanzi.

According to the spokesman at Ghanzi District Council, their Customer Service Centre receives anything from police cases, to shortage of water, agricultural services, old age pensions, or payment of wages and contract tenders.

“We have assigned ourselves a turnaround time  of ten days and we do not limit to the people what kind of issues they should report. We have now become more than just a customer service centre for the District Council, as people can just enquire about any government service; but we take every query and assign it to relevant government department and ask them to give us feedback which we then deliver to the source,” explained Nacane.

The Customer Service Centre is manned by three service agents; two of them deliberately chosen from a remote area as part of government’s on-going effort to empower the rural and marginalised people.“We trained them after identifying them; they are conversant on almost all languages of Ghanzi  District which make it easy for customers to access our office with ease,”Nacane added.

Nacane said where they learn that the caller had borrowed a phone to reach their customer service centre, his office usually relay the feedback to the nearest Social Welfare office.

According to the spokesman, his office also has embarked on an initiative of touring its rural areas every quarter whereby they spend a whole day in every settlement taking the various Council services to the people.