Power failure fury
Community members called for Eskom to take over the electricity provision from an embattled Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality (EMLM) after it failed to fix a transformer that blew last Tuesday, leaving the Westbourne, Madeira Park, King’s Park and a section of Cathcart Road and Robinson Road without power for 10 days.
Residents, citing as the reason the municipality’s failure to provide quality and adequate services to the community, called for Eskom’s intervention.
The meeting became heated when EMLM executive mayor Sisisi Tolashe and technical services director Sonwabile Nomandela failed to respond satisfactorily to people’s questions.
Tempers flared and blame was laid on the mayor for the situation.
Tolashe threatened to walk out of the meeting if community members continued to insult her while she tried responding to some of the questions. “If the howling and insults continue, I will walk out of this meeting because no progressive debate can be achieved under these conditions.
“Electricity is our main source of revenue. If Eskom took over the function, we would have a bigger problem than currently. We need the money from this particular service and we encourage people and businesses to pay their bills.”
Some of the issues raised concerned the current power outage which had affected mostly wards 9 and 10.
The lack of communication from the municipality’s communications unit, which hardly updated the public about the developments of the transformer that blew and plans to install another one, was also criticised by community members.
Nomandela defended the municipal communications unit, stating that EMLM communications manager Fundile Feketshane constantly and promptly updated the public as the situation unfolded.
The community booed him, stating that Border-Kei Chamber of Business administrator Adre Bartis was instead the one who regularly updated people.
When members asked whether the municipality had a contingency management plan for unplanned situations like the power outage, Nomandela said there was no plan because it was not in the budget of the current financial year.
He said the municipality was however working on a five-year plan to have back-up if the same incident reoccurred.
Community members also raised the issue of R70,000 which was spent per month to rent a mayoral car and the R90,000 that was used to buy KFC recently.
Tolashe said when she started working for the local authority in March 2018, the vehicle arrangement had already been made for the former mayor.
She said there was no audit report to validate the alleged use of the money on KFC to show a true reflection of what had actually happened.
“We will, however, look into the matter of exorbitant amounts of money that are used carelessly as we are trying by all means to save our bankrupt municipality.”
Tolashe said the amalgamation was to blame for the municipality’s situation because it came with debt from the previous municipalities.
A group of residents walked out of the meeting after asking her to resign.