07 March 2008

By Integrated Communication, Marketing and Information Services

THE City of Tshwane has been honoured for promoting multilingualism by the Municipality of the Decade Award on Saturday, 2 February 2008.

The award was presented at the Emperor's Palace by the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) in the category for the public sector.

The City of Tshwane was acknowledged as the best example of developing a language policy that ensures access to information and municipal services through all the languages of South Africa.

The City 's Language Services Section - which falls under the Integrated Communication, Marketing and Information Services division of the Office of the Executive Mayor and City Manager - was commended for its efforts in conducting extensive consultation with different stakeholders during the development of the language policy, which was approved by the Council on 2 August 2008.

The City's language policy provides for the use of four languages. These are English, Afrikaans, Sepedi and IsiZulu. The aim is to increase this to six - adding Setswana and IsiNdebele.

Other languages, including Sign Language, can be used on request. Besides being the custodian of the City's language policy, the section is responsible for translation during Council meetings and translation and editing of documents.

Since the approval of the policy, efforts have been made to create awareness of and promote multilingualism through the translation of by-laws and other municipal documents, and the distribution of sign language posters to clinics and customer care centres.

The work of the City of Tshwane's Language Services Section is seen as a benchmark for most municipalities in terms of language policy development and implementation and the promotion of multilingualism.

The City of Tshwane was also awarded the PanSALB Multilingualism Award in 2005, but this year the award was even more special since the Municipality has built on its previous achievement and is continuing to further multilingualism.

Source: Tshwane.gov.za