Angry protesters force councillor to close U’hage office

UITENHAGE ANC councillor Monde Vaaltyn was forced to close his office yesterday after angry residents held a protest, claiming he only hired people close to him on community development projects.

About 500 angry residents protested at Vaaltyn’s KwaNobuhle office, demanding that he be fired as they had lost faith in him.

This comes after the R40-million housing rectification project in the area was launched last week.

Vaaltyn said he closed the office yesterday as a precaution as he feared for the safety of his staff.

Community leader Sipho Matini said residents had had enough and wanted Vaaltyn to go.

“He does not consult us. He just does as he pleases. He has his grouping that he always employs and that creates a problem. He employs people close to him and only those he personally knows,” he said.

“Our stance now as the community is that we are fed up with him and we want him gone. He must step down, then we will take it from there.”

However, Vaaltyn dismissed the claims, saying residents in each of the four voting districts in his ward decided who would get jobs.

“Employment in the ward is done in a public meeting whereby each voting district would decide who will get to be employed, but others will go out of the meeting and create their own list of people.

“Everyone wants to be first in the queue. The community hires the people itself, not us here at the office. As an office we just want the number of people to be employed from them. We just coordinate the process,” he said.

ANC regional task-team coordinator Cheeky Makasi said they were to meet residents to hear their concerns late yesterday.