By KEDIBONE MOLAETSI

Businesses and residents in Vryburg continue to be subjected to severe electricity cuts due to poor maintenance of the electrical infrastructure, said the Democratic Alliance.

DA councillor in the Naledi Local Municipality, Jan Brand said the party will write to the North West MEC for Cooperative Governance, Gordon Kegakilwe asking him to intervene in the municipality’s failure to restore electricity supply to several areas and to fix streetlights.

“The ANC-led Naledi Local Municipality is unable to attend to the basic and yet critical part of service delivery which directly impacts the safety of residents which is to fix the electricity problems that currently engulf the whole municipality.

“For the past ten years, the smallholdings and households on the Delareyville and Schweizer road have been subjected to severe electricity cuts. Residents have to endure long consecutive hours without electricity due to poor maintenance of the electrical infrastructure,” said Brand.

He said this negatively affects businesses who suffer in losses not only in productivity but incur damage to their equipment as a result of the unstable electricity supply. Brand added that in August, three transformers were burnt down and only two of them were fixed.

“The transformer will cost the municipality R400 000 to fix, money which the municipality does not have. This leaves households to each use up to 40 Amperes (amps). This is too low and causes residents’ electricity to trip and go off for more than 20 minutes if they plug in more than one electronic device.

“For the past three years, almost all the streets lights within the town have not been working due to a burnt-out cable. The DA has on numerous occasions asked the municipality to replace it, but nothing is being done to fix the problem,” he said.

According to Brand, the municipality does not have the necessary equipment and vehicles such as cherry picker trucks to attend to necessary electrical faults. He said the lack of street lights has also allowed criminals to take advantage.

“There has been an increase in crime, particularly, house burglaries and robberies. The automatic timer switch is also broken and has not been replaced, which causes many streets in Vryburg to either permanently be in the dark as the street lights have to be manually turned on and off from each light pole.

“Due to ANC mismanagement, the municipality is in a deep financial crisis and is failing to maintain electrical infrastructure and deliver basic services to its residents. It is no longer enough to place municipalities under administration as this does not yield any results.

“The municipality needs a change of government that will implement a turn-around strategy to fix the municipality’s finances and restore service delivery,” said Brand.

The Administrator at the municipality, Paul Maseko has not responded to our messages before going to print. The Naledi Local Municipality is one of 14 municipalities put under administration in the province.

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Picture: One of the unfinished RDP houses Source: Daily Sun

By REGINALD KANYANE

Incomplete RDP houses in the North West province continues to be a “cause for concern.” According to the beneficiaries, the contractors left these houses incomplete and have continuously promised to come back to complete them, but that has never happened.

Some of these houses in Lekgopung and Taung have been left without roofing, plastering, windows, doors and proper floors.

However, the MEC for Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs in the North West, Mothibedi Kegakilwe he recently met with senior officials in the department to discuss the state of housing delivery in the province.

Kegakilwe further said his department should no longer tolerate poor performance by housing developers and must not hesitate to take action against such developers.

“We should not be lenient with developers because they decided to be in business and they must deliver good products. We, on the other hand, are in the business of delivering houses and we must do just that.

“We must also ensure that proper planning, monitoring, and contract management in the housing delivery chain is essential. Managers must plan, do a review and act to produce good results. Gone are the days when houses were built without internal services,” said Kegakilwe.

He added that the department cannot still be talking about developers who have long been appointed and have not yet occupied the site. Kegakilwe said communities expect nothing from them, but the delivery of quality houses.

“The department needs to address the challenge of water and sanitation in the context of housing delivery too. We also want to denounce the illegal occupation of the Community Residential Units (CRU) in Mahikeng. Most of the people who are occupying those units are government officials who can afford houses and we must, therefore, address this issue once and for all.

“We would request the Minister of Human, Water and Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu to convene a meeting with Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA) to resolve the issue of the social housing units in Mahikeng – Unit 3,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kegakilwe also appealed for the empowerment of women, youth and emerging housing contractors. He said the government will nurture them so that they do not collapse.

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