BCM ignores its promises

IN A BCM council meeting on May 30, executive mayor Xola Pakati deliberately ignored concerns of Mzamomhle and Gonubie residents raised with him and the council speaker Alfred Mtsi.

Mzamomhle residents threatened to protest the broken promises of BCM regarding electricity supply. Commitments were made by the mayoral committee in November 2017 that work would commence in February 2018. It did not.

The residents’ intention of blocking the concrete Gonubie access road was discussed by the Gonubie community policing forum on May 23, with the CPF secretary writing to the Mtsi the following day requesting that representatives of both the planning and the engineering units attend a stakeholders’ meeting.

When this was raised in council the only response from the mayor was that the tabled document had “structural defects”.

There was no willingness to engage with the importance of the matter despite any protest repercussions for residents and businesses in wards 27 and 28. It was a blatant demonstration of the arrogant disregard that this ANC mayor and his cabal have for the concerns of ratepayers and residents of BCM, regardless of their background and circumstances.

In a well-governed municipality, this would have been attended to long since, and the residents denied electricity supply would not have to resort to disruptive protest action to receive a basic utility. — Cllr Andre Swart, DA BCM caucus