Residents of Thusi Village in Wesselton have had enough of empty promises.
They are alluding to the promises made by the existing government of how their service delivery woes would have been attended to.
According to residents, this has not materialised.
After the Highvelder received numerous invites from residents, the newspaper went on a tour of the area.
Sewage and illegal dumping are the biggest problems, with sewage running down streets and into people’s yards.
According to Ms Jabu Mndebele, a sewage pump in her yard has been causing problems for the past five years. The sewage overflows regularly and a stench hangs in the air.
“The sewage even comes into the house and my grandchildren had to relocate because they were getting ill,’ Ms Mndebele said.
She is one of many who have sewage flowing into their homes and residents said the municipality sends people to fix the problems only temporarily.
Most of the residents who took the Highvelder on a tour are experiencing the same, if not worse problems, and they have taken it upon themselves to fix the sewage problem.
“It is going to be a whole lot worse as summer approaches. We dug trenches to redirect the sewage so it does not flow into our yards,” Mr Neo Hlatshwayo said.
Another headache is the various dumping sites littering most of the corners of the streets.
The question is who is at fault.
“We are all guilty, especially the municipality”, Mr David Sangweni said.
Mr Sangweni said because the municipality does not pick up the refuse regularly, refuse piles up and residents are forced to dump refuse on the corners of the streets as they do not have transport or a means to go to the dumping site.
Another headache is the roads that are, according to residents, only good for walking on.
Most of the roads in Thusiville are gravel, which means they are muddy when it rains and are not roadworthy.
However, the deteriorating roads are not the biggest problem in Thusiville. The constant power outages are becoming worse.
According to residents, the area experiences outages every day with no notice from the municipality.
“We do not know why there are always power outages. We read in the Highvelder it is because of illegal connections, but the municipality tells us we do not have transformers and we have no idea what is going on,” Mr Neo Hlatshwayo said.
Residents are adamant that if nothing is resolved, they will take matters into their own hands.
Msukaligwa Municipality did not respond to questions at time of going to the press.
