RESIDENTS affected by the allegedly illegal cell mast towers in Durban are encouraged by the Durban Anti-Cell Mast Alliance (DACMA) to put in objections as part of the Alliance’s case against the City and cellular provider, MTN.
Niki Moore from DACMA said the Alliance encouraged residents to object to these masts, saying their construction was so flawed that they could not be retrospectively legitimised, which is why their applications have been withdrawn twice already.
MTN initially put an advert in a daily newspaper in May 2019 calling for special consent for the ‘installation of telecommunications receivers on CCTV camera poles’, however the sites advertised were incorrect for 11 of the cell masts, and these had to be withdrawn from the application. In March this year, DACMA’s Daniel Barbeau said he was shocked to see that in a second advert published in February, the 11 cell masts that were withdrawn had again been advertised using the same GPS position and the same location description as the first advert.
At the time MTN’s agent had confirmed they would correct the GPS location and the location description when they re-advertised.
ALSO READ: Court papers expose ‘infrastructure-sharing arrangement’ as fictitious
“We feel that instead of continuing to try to legitimise them, the City should rather demolish them completely and compel MTN to start all over again, but legally this time. This entire project has been cloaked in secrecy from the beginning. It took a recent court case to reveal that in fact there was no basis for MTN to be allowed to flout the law. The court case exposed the City to be dishonest about how the MTN deal came about,” she said, speaking about a case heard in the high court on 23 October, where papers presented revealed that the eThekwini Municipality had never undertaken an ‘infrastructure-sharing arrangement’ with MTN, as both City management and MTN had previously claimed.
Following the hearing, Moore said the next step in the case was to get an interdict for MTN to take down all the illegal masts.
“It is up to the residents to expose corruption where possible. This is one of the few opportunities that ordinary residents will have to stand up to corruption and expose it. We have compiled an objection letter template, which citizens can use to voice their objections,” she said.
To obtain the objection template, WhatsApp Moore on 071 932 8925.
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