RESIDENTS of Mathibistad in Moretele local municipality are against the construction of municipal offices worth R59m when they are struggling to get basic services.

They staged a protest on Tuesday demanding that the municipality puts resident’s needs first.

Community leaders said that the municipality was prioritising non-essential issues when all they need is to have water, roads and other services.

Johannes Raseala said service delivery is more important than new municipal offices.

“The reason we embark on a march is that we have challenges at Moretele local municipality. The municipality decided to build new offices while we living in abject poverty. We believe that budget could have been allocated for service delivery.

“There is no water, sanitation and the roads are in bad condition. There are no high mast lights too and crime is rife in the area. We submitted a memorandum of grievances to municipality to urge them to halt the project,” Raseala said

Municipality spokesperson, Abel Malebye said they will address issues of service delivery raised by Mathibistad residents.

Malebye added that there was consultation session conducted before the decision was taken to build new municipal offices.

He also highlighted that the project was advertised on various local newspapers and they received no objections.

“We are not building any hall at the municipality as it was reported. But we are building municipal offices. Since the inception of municipality back in 2000, we have been using Baga-Mathibi Tribal Authority offices. We are now building municipal offices to capacitate our employees who are working here at Mathibestad,” he said.

-TDN

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