Not one fire engine operating in Mthatha
Mthatha has no fire engines.
Sonwabile Maphasa, one of 500,000 residents of the city and its surrounds, learnt this fact the hard way.
He watched his family home in Ngangelizwe Township being devoured by flames with no help appearing from the KSD fire department. After three hours nothing was left.
That was on October 20, more than three weeks ago.
This week, KSD municipal spokesperson Sonwabo Mampoza confirmed that the entire fleet had been taken to East London and Johannesburg for repairs.
He blamed the lockdown for the delay, saying parts could not be shipped from abroad.
Dispatch has learnt that KSD, one of the largest municipalities in the province, has been without fire engines for almost two months.
An outraged Mthatha Ratepayers and Residents Association spokesperson Madyibi Ngxekana said ratepayers were contributing monthly levies for a fire fighting service that did not work.
He accused the council of daylight robbery.
Maphasa is not taking it. He is demanding reparations from the municipality, saying he made many frantic calls to KSD to send fire engines.
I got a call while at work “around 9am from neighbours that the house was on fire and I tried calling for fire engines to be dispatched to help,” he said. The response was that they “did not have any and that they would try to get one from the OR Tambo district municipality. After three hours, we gave up phoning.”
Maphasa said neighbours had piled in and tried to fight the blaze. But a municipal water outage made this difficult. Neighbours brought water in buckets from their homes.
Maphasa said KSD must pay for the loss since it had failed to provide a service. He said some of the family’s possessions could have been saved.
We are discussing the possibility “of suing. This incident has traumatised my parents, who are very old. Imagine having to watch helplessly while your whole house is swallowed by a huge fire.
Mthatha is the third-largest city in the province. News of the collapse of the fire service started in 2012 when a KSD firefighter told the Dispatch ailing equipment and machines were resulting in homes and businesses being ravaged by fire.
Mampoza said one of their two fire engines had been sent for repairs last year and the other last month. Council bosses were aware of the seriousness of the matter and management at the fire department has recently drafted an urgent report ”.
Asked about the razing of the Maphasa house, Mampoza said the OR Tambo district municipality, which was assisting, had no fire engines available near Mthatha.
EC Chamber of Business president Vuyisile Ntlabati called the situation dangerous and not conducive for business. We will now have to pay higher insurance premiums. The availability of fire fighting services is critical to business.”
Ngxekana said ratepayers had been protesting about the decline of the fire department for years.
In 2014, the ratepayers tried to convince then-Cogta MEC Fikile Xasa to allow them to create a trust account where they could deposit monthly rates payments instead of giving them to KSD, but he told them this would bankrupt KSD, according to Ngxekana. Things are just getting worse “at KSD. Maybe they should just put the municipality under an administrator. ”