Stench infiltrates shack forest
NO SERVICES: ONLY FOUR OUT OF 10 COMMUNAL TOILETS FOR 500 FAMILIES NOT BLOCKED
Illegal electricity connections bring power from the railway line.
Silver Town informal settlement in East London’s Mdantsane has only 10 toilets for 500 families, say community leaders, and six are blocked.
ANC ward councillor Mashwabada Gcilishe blamed residents for the blockages. He said residents run pipes off the water pipes running to the toilets, to make water sources in their yards.
Gcilishe said that every week, Buffalo City metro municipality unblocked the toilets, but a day or so later they were blocked again. He said he had tried to stop residents installing standpipe taps next to their shacks, to no avail.
But residents said the two taps installed next to the toilets were not sufficient for the whole settlement. Silver Town was built in 1990 and it is still growing.
Mabhele said people in Silver Town wanted electricity and toilets urgently .
For electricity, residents relied on illegal connections from the railway line a kilometre from the shacks. They said they used to draw electricity from nearby traffic lights but the municipality cut those lines two years ago. They said the electricity from the railway line was very weak and they only used it to charge phones and for lights.
There are no streets and rubbish is not collected. When community leader Yonela Mabhele showed GroundUp the area, the smell from the blocked toilets was unbearable. “These toilets are not enough. This community is very big. That is why they get blocked so often,” she said.
Mabhele has been living in the area for more than seven years and she and others have written a number of letters to the municipality and to mayor Xola Pakati asking for electricity, with no luck. They recently blocked a nearby road with burning tyres to protest the lack of response to their plight .
Residents marched to Pakati’s office in July, but no one came to speak to them.
Another community leader, Ayanda Ndongeni, said the municipality did not clean up the informal settlement. He said at a mayoral imbizo called by Pakati last year residents were told their grievances had been written down and Pakati would send delegates to follow them up. “But that never happened.”
He raised the issues again this year and “we are still waiting”.
Gcilishe says he is negotiating with the municipality to get electricity.
Questions sent to municipal spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya on November 13 were not answered. GroundUp followed up with e-mails and WhatsApp messages, with no success.
Republished from Groundup. org.za