ROCKY ROADS
KSD to spend millions on upgrade
KING Sabata Dalindyebo (KSD) municipal bosses will channel almost R30-million towards fixing dilapidated roads and streets in and around Mthatha.
This was revealed by KSD mayor Dumani Zozo during a special council meeting last week.
Decaying road networks have been a bone of contention between residents of the city and authorities for many years despite efforts to repair them.
While tabling a Section 52 (d) quarterly report detailing the municipality’s state of finances, including expenditure between January and March this year, Zozo revealed that the financial statements had recorded a shortfall of around R21-million on projected revenue due to challenges in collecting monies mainly for rates and electricity.
He cited several factors, including that people who were living in municipal properties, were not paying rent.
However, Mthatha Ratepayers and Residents Association Booi Malgas questioned why ratepayers would be so willing to part with their hard-earned money when infrastructure development was clearly lagging.
“How do you expect them to pay when there are pothole-riddled streets and roads?
“Electricity outages are also still the norm despite millions of rands being poured in to fix the electricity network supply,” he said.
But Zozo told council that the municipality’s finances had also recorded a surplus amounting to R29.7-million in the third quarter of the financial year.
The money was in the form of extra municipal infrastructure grants from the National Treasury.
“It shows that we are using money wisely. We are going to commit the money towards fixing the roads,” he added.
Businesses have welcomed the news with O R Tambo District Chamber of Business president Vuyisile Ntlabati describing the infrastructure in Mthatha as an eyesore.
He said business people, together with ratepayers and other citizens, had been crying for years for better infrastructure, especially the road networks.
“Their [KSD] major weakness is maintenance. If they could invest heavily in maintenance, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Ntlabati said the situation had a negative impact on businesses and could be what was keeping major investors from coming in as the town was an eyesore.
As a result, criminals pounced on motorists who had to drive very slowly while navigating deep and sharp potholes.
The Dispatch was however unable to establish which streets and roads would be fixed from the new allocation.
KSD bosses have indicated in previous years that at least R1.1-billion was needed to upgrade all roads within the municipal area.
This was because most of the roads had reached the end of their designed capacity and needed to be overhauled completely or rebuilt. —