De Freitas preaches hope in Turffontein church
Soon illegal activities by officials as well as residents involving housing will be something of the past - MP de Freitas.
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MEMBER of Parliament for the South, Manny de Freitas, visited the Full Gospel Church in Turffontein and celebrated having hope for the City since the new administration has been taking serious investigative steps to combat corruption and punish wrongdoing by the City’s public servants.
Speaking on Sunday, 26 March, at the church, De Freitas said, “I am now more hopeful than ever. The last seven months since the new administration has taken over has shown me that real tangible changes are taking place. In fact, more positive changes have taken place in our beautiful City than in the previous 22 years combined,”
“The truth of the matter is that the administration led by Mayor Mashaba had inherited a very broken City. At the end of last year, the Joburg Mayor, Clr Herman Mashaba, explained to me that what the new administration discovered was that there was not only corruption and theft, but that the City was being looted outright. However, all this only makes us want to fix Johannesburg and make it the world-class city that it should be.
“The newly established JMPD K9 Unit has already made successful drug findings and arrests. Illegal activities are being stopped and criminals are being apprehended. At the same time basic services, which were previously neglected, such as tree trimming, grass-cutting and repairing of the hundreds of potholes, are being fixed.
“When the new administration took office it demanded that Gauteng government departments that had been failing to meet their debt payments to the value of R260 million to the City immediately pay.
“This week the same City administration announced that it had purchased 28 state-of-the-art fire engines – one for each fire station in the City, and that it will employ an additional 160 firefighters to enhance the capacity of the Emergency Management Services of Joburg.
“The Mayor appointed the former provincial Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya as the City’s head of its Anti-corruption unit. Since being appointed, Sibiya has been able to arrest over 100 officials working at licensing departments. The Mayor announced that 972 cases of fraud and corruption at licensing departments across Johannesburg between February 2008 and January 2016 had created more than R14-million in losses through fraudulent activities.”
De Freitas concluded by saying that soon illegal activities involving housing, perpetrated by officials as well as residents, will be something of the past, as those corrupt individuals will be arrested.
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