Executive Mayor launches touching lives fridays in Schoemansdal

Nkomazi Local Municipality’s (NLM) executive mayor, Cllr Phindile Magagula, intends to impact people’s lives through the Touching Lives Programme that was launched in Schoemansdal on Wednesday April 5.

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This campaign will take place every Friday. The mayor and her committee members will visit one village at a time in response to the disaster that recently hit most of them. “Nkomazi has suffered a great deal in the aftermath of the recent floods. We came up with the Touching Lives Fridays in response to all the damage that happened during that time. We will choose one village weekly, where we will go to clean up, patch potholes on municipal roads, and gravel the roads linking sections. We have various stakeholders on board, such as the community services teams that collect waste and ensure that the illegal dumping places are cleaned up on the day. The municipality’s water section also joins us to check for any water leaks and ensures the water supply connections for that particular village get sorted out,” she said.

According to Magagula, the programme was kick-started on a very high note in Schoemansdal, where stakeholders and community members came out in full support.

“It was very humbling to see the community joining us for this common goal. We could not clean up the entire village in one day, but the work that was done made a huge difference. We would also like to thank Buscor for providing us with a TLB to fast-track our work. Among the companies supporting us, is the Komati Basin Water Authority, which provided us with drinking water while we were doing the work. We also had the Mpumalanga Department of Public Works providing more machinery for grading the roads. The Mpumalanga Department of Agriculture was also there with us.”

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Magagula has called upon local business personnel, especially those who are contracted to the municipality, to support this programme in any way they can.
“I extend an invitation to the businesses contracted with the municipality to help us as we get it back on its feet after the disastrous rains. We have worked with a few companies that lent us some machines to boost our yellow fleet during the launch, and we appreciate that. It would be great to see more hands on deck to ensure this programme is a success and we achieve our goal.”