Community task team addresses municipal no show at meetings

A TASK team has been formed following Sunday’s KwaMsane community meeting, to interact with the municipality in an attempt to address the constant failure of municipal officials to attend community meetings.

At most community meetings, residents say, the municipality is not there to address pertinent service delivery and other issues.

The five-person task team elected will this Thursday go to the municipal offices to extend an invitation to a community meeting.

Thereafter, the team will call another urgent community meeting to discuss the next step should the municipality once again fail to honour the invitation.

KwaMsane, ward 6, councillor Mfana Gumede said Sunday’s meeting had been set for a prior date and that he had written to the municipal manager, the council speaker and the mayor inviting them to the said meeting.

“But that meeting did not sit because no one from the municipality came; seemingly they are not prepared to come to these community meetings and the community is aggrieved,” Gumede said.

Discussed at Sunday’s meeting, attended by a considerable number of people, were the issues of the handing over of title deeds to rightful owners, a longstanding issue which Gumede said had been a thorn even for the previous administration; property rates; road construction and the fixing of potholes in the ward; the cleaning of the gully in the area; and crime.

Gumede said these are reoccurring issues which have been on the agenda of previous community meetings, which is why the municipality needs to attend these meetings to give ‘the correct answers’.

Potholes cause punctures at several roads in the township making these difficult to use. It was, however, expected that these would be attended to after the municipality recently launched a ‘yellow plant’ and programme to fix roads throughout its wards.

"There are problems, we know, and we know the damage done to our wards from ward 1 up to ward 23 with the condition of the roads after the heavy rains. We hope this yellow plant will make a change.

"The truth is that if we work together as councillors, we will see the difference. We will work in all the wards and none will be locked out, and we will check the performance of these services," Mayor Mxolisi Mthethwa had said at the launch of the plant and road fixing programme.

Gumede, however, has alleged that unnecessary ‘politics’ were being played where wards not led by the IFP were being delayed in having the plant work in those areas.

“What is unfortunate is that there are IFP people who live in my ward who need these services urgently,” Gumede said.

The rising levels of crime, in particular, house break-ins; unkept empty sites and vacant, abandoned houses seemingly providing shelter to would-be criminals and the need for increased police visibility were points also raised at Sunday’s community meeting.

“The SAPS needs to come to the party because we do not want the community to end up taking the law into their own hands,” Gumede said.