Not okay Mrs Gigabytes
FORMER finance minister Malusi Gigaba's six official overseas trips last year accompanied by his wife Norma which cost taxpayers R1.3-million-plus refer.
Do Mr and Mrs Gigaba have no shame at all? Did they ever stop to think how many loaves of bread could have been bought for hungry people in lieu of what certainly seems to have been a tax-funded opportunity seized by Mrs Gigaba to go on international shopping sprees?
Hopefully they will do the right thing and pay back, without delay, the unnecessary additional travel and accommodation costs she imposed on South Africans at a time when the government was supposedly enforcing austerity measures. — Ellen, East London
Flyovers for crossings
THE recent accident at a train crossing in the Western Cape refers. I think it’s high time the ruling party introduces flyover bridges for roads that cross railway lines before more people are ripped apart.
If the current regime thinks compensating families of accident victims is the best option to address the problem, then government coffers will run dry sooner than later. And the high rate of unemployment will never be addressed in this country because monies will keep having to be used for compensation.
The worst part of this is that those who utilise trains and bakkies are the most vulnerable in our societies, including farmworkers.
The Western Cape should take full responsibility for protecting citizens in Cape Town by introducing flyover bridges for all roads crossing over railway lines. In fact, all other provinces should introduce such bridges to protect the citizens of this country.
Surely the expense of building cross over bridges will be less than the continued forking out of compensation for affected families. To do nothing would be more cruel than the apartheid regime was. — Mzwamadoda Yonana, Mdantsane
Underspend a shocker
AS our road network continues to disintegrate at an alarming rate driving through the potholed avenues of Gonubie can be a risky venture.
So it was with disbelief that I recently read in the Dispatch that Buffalo City Metro had spent only 40% of its allocated budget with two months remaining before the end of the financial year.
How is it possible that we are saddled with such an incompetent dysfunctional council? What a pity that the slumbering oversight cannot be charged with dereliction of duty.
In your edition of April 29 we read further about the foul up with tenders awarded in respect of the Mdantsane road maintenance project. It’s indeed risky having to entrust our rates to an inept bureaucracy.
National government should surely investigate whether the council should be placed under curatorship. Or what about a visit to Nelson Mandela Metro to see how a DA-led council functions? Or is our administration perhaps too busy with other unrelated activities? — DJ Michau, via e-mail
A Parkside councillor?
GROWING up as a kid in Parkside, East London was always a pleasure and fun. Today the suburb is in ruins, totally neglected and dirty. No cleaning up seems to be done and every open space has become a dumping site.
Starting from the Parkside bridge till the BP garage in Durban Flats. Every street has potholes, speed humps are not fixed and painted, sidewalks are not maintained and the community hall walls are an eyesore.
The wall should be replaced with the new modern fencing used today.
What is the BCM portfolio committee doing about the councillor responsible for this area? What is the councillor being assessed on? Performance or non-performance?
I’d be ashamed to call myself a councillor if the area which I have to oversee looked like this! — Burton Brown, Buffalo Flats