White River Library made to wait for the next budget
Last year floods damaged the White River library however renovations are prioritised for the fiscal year 2024/25, according to the Department of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation’s business plan.
The townspeople, learners, students and staff of the White River Library will have to wait for the 2024/25 budget before it will be renovated and reopened.
This library had to close its doors on February 20 last year due to the building’s deterioration. The walls and roof were in a very poor condition, which put lives at risk.
The community feels this situation begs the question why the building had been allowed to disintegrate into a disaster zone in the first place.
Several users who depend on the library for various reasons, expressed their disappointment about its closure, such as Sandile Mabuza, who does online studies and depends on it to do his research. “Now I have to use more money to travel to and use the Mbombela Library. This could have been avoided if the provincial government and management dealt with the problem before it got out of hand,” he said.
ALSO READ: White River Library forced to close doors
Kobus van der Walt, another community member, said the library’s reopening is long overdue, and there has been no communication about when this will happen. “We only have one library in the area. The department should have prioritised it after it was closed and ensured it was repaired timeously. I am afraid that if the community doesn’t act, it will remain closed indefinitely,” he said.
The spokesperson for the Department of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation, Sibongile Nkosi, said the library was affected by the floods at the beginning of last year, and to protect the users, it had to be closed. “The temporary closure is due to a leaking roof as a result of the heavy rains.
ALSO READ: Lift with 13 people in Rob Ferreira Hospital fails, plunges into basement
The walls are also not in a good condition. The library was registered under the emergency projects affected by the floods. However, the funds from the Disaster Fund were not made available from the National Disaster Management Centre. However, the White River Library’s renovations are prioritised for the 2024/25 financial year as per the departmental business plan,” she said.
