‘Dissolve municipality’

EMFULENI: COMMUNITY PROTESTS AT LACK OF SERVICE DELIVERY

Cosatu calls for Cogta MEC to put municipality under administration.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in Gauteng yesterday expressed its concern about the service delivery challenges that Emfuleni municipality in Sedibeng continues to face.

The trade union federation called on the MEC cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) to dissolve the municipality with immediate effect and put it under administration.

“We further call on the law enforcement agencies to implement a number of recommendations of investigations conducted and demand for the perpetrators to be arrested and tried in court as a matter of urgency,” it said.

Emfuleni mayor Gift Moerane said he was surprised that there were corruption allegations against him.

“I do not know what is meant when there are allegations that I am corrupt and watch people loot, when I am the one who initiated the process of cleaning this institution of all corrupt activities that I found when I became mayor,” he said.

Moerane said he has made a difference since he stepped into his office in the last 12 months.

“I have made progress based on the assessment report that I wrote to province after the 12 months I have been here,” he said.

“I wrote and elaborated on things that should be done and I asked [Cogta] MEC [Lebogang] Maile to please send me a team of experts in their different fields of electricity, infrastructure, roads, and finances. Each department that is important for service delivery has a lead administrator.”

I don’t know what is meant when there are allegations that I am corrupt...

The mayor added that the issue of electricity was being sorted out. “We have two power platforms in this municipality. We have Eskom that covers almost 70% of the areas of this municipality, where Eskom is directly supplying the electricity to all the townships and we have areas that are supplied by Emfuleni.

“It’s through the efforts of the mayoral office that Eskom agreed on an action plan to start restoring electricity and have indeed started.”

The community of Emfuleni and the Vaal Corruption Watch group took to the streets in the past four days to express their frustration due to poor service delivery and corruption allegations.

Themba Mnisi, a member of the Vaal Corruption Watch, said the group decided to spearhead the protests over the past days because their grievances have been falling on deaf ears.

“Our demands have not yet been met since we gave those 24 hours to respond to the letter we sent listing the issues we are facing.

“That is why we decided to take to the streets and have no intention to stop until the minister comes down to address us,” he said.

Mnisi said the group and the community would not stop taking to the streets and threatened to burn everything that belonged to the municipality until someone from Cogta addressed them.

Silus Zimu, an Emfuleni team administrator, said Eskom has been attending mayoral meetings to understand the community’s grievances regarding electricity.

“We’ve been given schedules by Eskom of where they will be installing transformers and we have been getting pictures from community members that Eskom is indeed installing them,” he said.

“It’s through collaborated efforts that this can be done. We’re all part of government and should work together.”

Zimu said the ailing infrastructure was also on their priority list as the government was in the process of finding funds to repair it. –

Gift Moerane Mayor of Emfuleni municipality