Promise to restore services in uMhlathuze
BELEAGUERED by several service delivery challenges in the past week, uMhlathuze Mayor Xolani Ngwezi vowed to step up efforts to restore order across the city.
He was speaking in a Facebook Live engagement with angry city residents last week, who demanded answers on refuse collection delays, water and electricity-related issues, among others.
Residents took the mayor and the municipality’s executive to task over failures to deliver basic services, which included keeping the city clean.
While refuse collection backlogs were expected to be cleared by today (Monday) with a normal schedule restored, lack of water and unkempt public areas are also a sore point for city residents.
Relating to the failure to cut the now overgrown grass in many areas, the mayor said, “We have not performed well, especially now at the beginning of the year.
“The main problem is that in many areas we don’t have tractors, for example in eSikhaleni we are supposed to have three but there is not even one that is operational.
“In Richards Bay, there were seven operating but five went down and we are left with two. Similarly in Empangeni,” he said.
Delays in repairing trucks and tractors critical to service delivery remain a challenge amid capacity issues and delays at the workshop.
“There have been some issues with our workshop, but what we have done is remove all our vehicles that talk to service delivery and send them to external service providers for fixing, so we return them to operation as fast as we can.
“We have got a big fleet, about 800 vehicles, and there are about seven mechanics in the workshop,
impacting performance,” he said.
“But there can never be an excuse for not servicing our people.
“Working together, we can find workable solutions.”