Businessman from Ilinge:

It is embarrassing to find that some government departments are ignorant about development of some community areas such as Ilinge. Ilinge township was built in 1965, in Transkei. I arrived in 1969 and there was no electricity and telephone. After 1994, electricity facilities were put in place and distributed accordingly, but nothing has been done by Telkom to date.

Ilinge is a big location situated 20km from Komani. It has a huge fleet of minibuses in the taxi industry. There are a lot of churches, schools, a clinic, a police station, a post office, shops, bottle stores, taverns, shebeens and other businesses.

Yet there are no landline services at Ilinge. The community has to travel for 20km to fax from town and back. Even the local post office has no fax facilities.

Faxing is important as the community sends funeral claim forms to the institutions for funeral funds. The unemployed people in the community fax CVs for new jobs and related issues. All those privileges cannot be enjoyed by the people of Ilinge.

I run a business which sells electricity, airtime, does DStv payments, Lotto, photocopies, e-mail, typing, printing, scanning, laminating, etc . . . but I cannot offer faxing because there are no landlines for the fax machines.

In my personal capacity, I applied for a landline and was declined.

The importance of Telkom poles is equivalent to Eskom poles in business.

This is a sincere request to the telecommunication department to stand up and take drastic measures for the Ilinge community. It is only 5km from the N6 line to this area. Copy Eskom’s style. It will be highly appreciated if Telkom can respond to this request positively.