Residents call on the City of Mbombela to repair street lights
Some residents claimed that the street lights from Barberton and the Halls area into Mbombela are dysfunctional.
Locals are calling on the City of Mbombela (CoM) to repair all the broken street lights on busy roads and on the entrance roads into the city.
A concerned resident, Elandré Renken, claims that the street lights from Barberton and the Halls area into Mbombela are not working. He said the lights in the residential areas in White River are also out of order. “Half of the street poles are down. I don’t know if it’s because drunken drivers drove over them or whether it was cable theft. The challenge is that the municipality is not communicating with residents as to why they are not working. It is not a recent occurrence this has been a problem for a long time,” Renken said, stressing that it is embarrassing, seeing that Mbombela is the entry point to the provincial tourism industry, and visitors are always welcomed by a city in the dark.
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“This matter needs to be treated as a matter of urgency for the sake of the people who are paying rates and taxes, especially when people are visiting the area to spend their money. The load-shedding is not an excuse, because the lights are off even when the power is on,” he said.
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Another resident, Ted Jansen, said the dysfunctional street lights are attracting criminals who hijack cars and rob pedestrians on the dark roads. “I believe the municipal officials are also travelling on the same roads and can see the street lights are not working, but are not doing anything about it. I do not understand people are employed to work on the lights, but instead are being paid for doing nothing,” he said.
Cynthia Selowe blamed vandalism, cable theft and maladministration by the CoM. She said that with the ongoing vandalism, perpetrators go unpunished and thieves do as they please, and no one is being arrested. “The municipality is not doing enough to protect the infrastructure, and they are using cheap products to keep the lights on. We are being governed by people who only think about their own pockets. The community is also not playing its part in making sure that the infrastructure that is for their benefit is safeguarded. The issue of street lights has been going on for a long time. Nothing much has been done yet, and we know nothing will be done,” she lamented.
The CoM’s spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, said the municipality is aware of the street lights that are not working and is in the process of working on repairs. He apologised for the inconvenience that had been caused.
