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BUFFALO CITY SURGES ON TO FIGHT COVID-19

In an effort to get citizens involved in the fight against COVID-19, the Buffalo City Metro continues to launch its ward-based structures.

As part of raising awareness, a Covid-19 Ward Based Rapid Response Task Team Implementation committee has been set up. The team is currently setting up ward-based structures in hotspot wards.
 
At the end of July, 12 wards with the highest number of Covid-19 cases were identified by the Department of Health and consultations then began with ward councillors and their ward committees to come up with solutions. Hot spot wards are 3, 5, 7, 11, 15, 20, 24, 29, 41, 43, 44, 47 respectively. 

The City has moved swiftly to establish and launch ward-based task teams in 90 percent of the wards in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus in the communities.

The Municipality’s Covid-19 Command centre received a report this week that as 29 August the City had 20 445 confirmed cases, 19 559 recoveries, 232 cases that are still active and 654 deaths.

The Municipality is also undertaking awareness campaigns and updating citizens via community radio stations regularly, as well as on social media.

Task Team members of the established wards are empowered by the Department of Health in order to understand the preventive and protective measures that can be used to mitigate the risk of coronavirus. Further information sharing, training and communication for stakeholders in the established wards is ongoing with the assistance of Cogta. 

A series of meetings are held prior to the main launch, where task team members develop an implementation strategy tailored to the needs of each community, and based on available data together with a communications plan.

The task team meets on weekly basis on agreed days in order to report on their specific related areas.

The secretariat of the task team is comprised of Community Development workers, Ward Admin Assistants and Ward Committee secretaries and they are supported by the Municipality’s Public Participation Practitioners.

The secretariat takes minutes of the meetings and record issues or challenges that require intervention of the BCM Multi-Disciplinary Committee and BCM Command Council.

The task teams also assist in contact tracing, sharing positive information about the virus and it is hoped that these “on the ground based” interactions will influence behavioural change.

The ward-based teams are provided with personal protective equipment to ensure that all the work is done successfully, and safety measures are put in place.

The Municipality will be launching the following ward based structures:

Date    : 02 September 2020
Time    : 10h00
Venue : Ward 23 N.U.16 Mdantsane( Bishop Bekwa Church)
    And 
Date     : 03 September 2020

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Date Posted: 2020-09-01