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Sanitation project in the Mangaung Metro, Bloemfontein.
Civil organisations in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality say service delivery continues to suffer due to political interference, limited transparency, and nepotism within the municipality.
Residents accuse the City for failing to be proactive in addressing service delivery issues. They say the Metro is still riddled with potholes, sewer spillages and a backlog of bucket toilets.
Mangaung Concerned Community Chairperson Themba Zweni says, “You know you will be told that there’s issues with tools of trade , there are disputes with regards to municipality and workers you see, and as MCC I think we are going to add another dispute because they’re positions that we advertised last year in the municipality about 450 positions but in Centlec positions that were advertised and processes were not followed but positions were filled in.”
Mangaung Service Delivery Forum Chairperson Potso Motoko adds, “There’s no service delivery at all, refuse is all over, the sewers are running around even in the households. The pit toilets are full today to the point where by residents cannot even use their toilet and we don’t have the roads unfortunately, while they’re people in the Mango, they are busy promoting nepotism and they are promoting corruption, they are not doing whatever in the interest of the residents, and we’re not impressed, our water reservoirs are not guarded but they are companies that are claiming such money, the landfills sites are out of control, refuse everywhere.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JJe3iWtCWI
DELIVERY OF SERVICES
The Metro says delivery of services remains corner stone for them. However, it has acceded that there are fundamental challenges that are impediments to the City.
The Metro says there are projects that already to address some of the challenges.
The City’s Infrastructure MMC Vusi Soqaga explains, “Our road network to be honest in the whole city it has big challenges, but out of the wisdom that we have learned is that before we can enter into aggressive road infrastructure development, we need to firstly to fix sewer and water which we are stabilising, I’m not saying we are there 100%.”
“We are stabilising it now with limited resources that we have, we have started patching of roads and painting of some of their roads but also the private sector has started to come to the party in joining hands with us,” Soqaga says.
The Metro is yet to approve proposals that came out of the infrastructure and investment summits that are intended to address the poor waste treatment plants, negligence and lack of infrastructure maintenance.
