Legislature votes on extended hours for White River licensing department
The ANC on Thursday voted with the DA in Mpumalanga to extend the operation times at the White River Traffic Department. The motion was brought by the DA as part of their campaign to improve service delivery in the province.
“We appreciate the decision of this government to put party differences aside and support the DA’s motion in order to improve the services which residents in White River receive,” said Jane Sithole, the DA Mpumalanga Provincial leader.
The vote comes after the Mpumalanga legislature convened to discuss the State of the Province, which took place last week Friday.
Bosman Grobler, a DA Member of the Provincial Legislature (MPL), said that the DA was pleased with the ANC’s decision.
“We are obviously delighted about the prospect that the backlog may be eradicated.” The DA has made it their goal to improve service delivery within a “reasonable time”.
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Trudie Grove-Morgan, MPL and DA Spokesperson for community, safety and security, said that the DA has chosen to focus on operational issues at traffic departments over the past few years.
“Looking at Govan Mbeki, White River and greater Mbombela and in Lekwa and Albert Luthuli, for example, you find that there’s a shortage of the special paper on which to print the licenses, there is sometimes no ink, equipment is broken and systems are offline.”
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown have exasperated these issues. “Residents are extremely frustrated at the moment,” said Sithole.
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Grove-Morgan went on to say that this was “not fair” to users who had to wait in queues and were then told they could not be helped.
“It is a priority [to the DA] because users wishing to use the service are sent home because of internal operational issues. It isn’t fair on someone who spent 3 hours or more waiting in a queue.”
The party also explained that these queues were not safe as it was the optimal space to spread the Corona-virus.
“We will continue to monitor the implementation thereof,” said Grobler.
