E1m spent on Nhlangano street lights
NHLANGANO – Nhlangano Town Council has spent E1 million to light up one of the streets in the town.
The figure was confirmed by the council Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Babsy Mavuso. He stated that the lighting of Mshengu Street was the first phase which was budgeted for this financial year.
The E1 million street lights are 25 poles and 50 lamps in total, which use solar power. Breaking down the total cost, Mavuso explained that they had to relocate the Eswatini Electricity Company and Eswatini Post and Telecommunications Cooperation (EPTC) lines that were in the middle of the road to the side so the lights could be at the centre of the road.
“They are using a very expensive cable and we had to incur the costs,” he said.
He further said the total cost was also inclusively the digging of the street lights holes and adding concrete.
He stated that more streets would be budgeted for in the coming years.
Projects
When asked of what other projects were in the pipeline for this financial year, Mavuso mentioned that they would be installing two Apollo lights towards the residential places, expressing hope that such would be a deterent to criminals.
He further said they would also tar one of the roads and further re-gravel other roads. It is worth noting that during a stakeholders meeting in April, residents raised concerns on the issue of the bad roads in their residential areas, which they said were damaging their cars.
When asked how they would choose which road to tar, Mavuso said they would make an informed decision after a consultant had evaluated all the roads and estimated the costs, depending on their budget.
He said they would have started re-graveling, but were disturbed by the non-stop rainfall which caused mud and difficulties for residents to use the roads. He said they would also re-gravel, in particular, roads that were leading to town for easy access. On the issue of introducing Pakani in town, Mavuso said they had started involving the council’s stakeholders through a consultant.
He said there would be a meeting tomorrow at Mathendele wherein their consultant would be getting the ratepayers views on it.
Consultations
He said they should be done with internal consultations by end of July and take the document to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and thereafter the minister would then take it to Parliament to be approved and gazetted into law.
He said they were hoping everything would be done by December so that they could start implementing it by the next financial year, which is April 2023.
Meanwhile, the CEO said they would be announcing the winner of the billboards tender, who will be rearranging the billboards and clean-up the town.
He said the winning tenderer would reconstruct and manage the billboards.
He said they would be zoned and managed by one company.
Mavuso said once the tendering company was ready, they would give companies six months’notice on the changes and hand them over to the company, which would only pay rates in town.
ITEMS ON NHLANGANO TOWN COUNCIL BUDGET