Councillors in the hot seat at Brakpan Town Committee meeting

The 10th Brakpan Town Committee meeting was held at Cosy Corner in Brenthurst on November 17 where councillors were given the opportunity to answer service delivery-related questions from community members.

Most of the questions were answered by Ward 97 Clr Brandon Pretorius, who is also the newly appointed MMC for Environment and Waste Management.

It was revealed that the City of Ekurhuleni is finalising bid specifications for the Weltevreden landfill site and new security will be appointed soon.

Regarding Plastic City, he reported there is progress in removing the informal residents.

There were four operations in the last six months and the number of informal residents in the settlement has decreased drastically.

About 91% of these residents are illegal immigrants. This makes the process of removal difficult, as there is a stringent process to be followed to relocate and eventually deport these individuals.

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As soon as all these residents have been vacated, the city hopes to remove the vacant structures. It is in the process of obtaining legal permissions and documents.

The next item on the agenda was the waste removal crisis. The municipality has 78 waste removal trucks, of which 37 were operational.

Twenty-two trucks have since been added to the fleet and the addressing of the waste backlog is underway.

Questions about why it took so long to suspend the waste management HOD, were answered as well.

This was due to the mediation and disciplinary process. This took some time since this was the first HOD to be suspended in years. The waste issue is getting precedence in the budget and the city is working hard to resolve the issue.

It was after this answer that the meeting devolved into angry arguments, as citizens felt the ward councillors were ‘speaking pretty words, but not doing anything’.

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This argument between the committee chairperson William Douglas, councillors and members of the public lasted several minutes before the order was re-established.

Regarding the COE app, it was noted that the app is overloaded and that IT is working on resolving issues.

People who experience billing issues, such as incorrect billing information, are urged to take meter measurements and take the evidence to the city to resolve issues.

It was mentioned that the city might start reimbursing self-readings of meters if a proof is sent that billing is inconsistent with readings.

Substation break-ins are also being addressed. Alarm systems are being investigated and in the meantime, police and private and community security firms are patrolling around substations to reduce break-ins.

The skills audit was another point of discussion and it was noted that the audit was completed in March. However, restructuring is taking time because the city has over 10 000 employees and restructuring at such a scale is difficult.

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Questions about the water quality of the Brakpan Dam were raised as well. Monthly audits of water quality are done through Afri Forum. They currently find the water to be acceptable.

Potholes are also a major issue and repairs are being made, but the rain is slowing progress. Potholes can be reported on the COE app, under the complaints section and then under roads and stormwater.

The public is urged to report potholes so that they can be fixed. The turnaround for complaints was identified as 48 hours for issues such as energy and sewage.

Issues such as potholes or other infrastructure issues have an average turnaround of 21 days. Clr Riaan van Zyl addressed concerns about drug houses.

According to Van Zyl, no member of the public has reported drug houses to him, but he is working with the SAPS to identify houses and run operations to close them down. He requested anyone with information to report it to him or the police.

He also addressed concerns about the response time from the fire brigade, saying the council is aware of the issues and maintains that the brigade is working to the best of its ability.