Party demands written commitment from council

EMBONISWENI – Following the Mbombela Local Municipality’s executive mayor, Cllr Sibusiso Mathonsi’s meeting with members of this community last week, in which they discussed measures to speed up the provision of clean running water, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) wrote a letter to the municipality in which they registered their dissatisfaction with these short-term measures.

“The reason why we have written a formal letter to the municipality is that this problem has been ongoing for years. Various mayors had promised to work on the issue, but they all left without fixing the problem. “We see this as nothing but just lip service once again,” said the EFF’s branch chairperson, Mr Cyril Chuene.

Chuene, who is also a resident here, said the water tankers drew water directly from the river and then supplied it to the community. “We are actually tired of the water tankers.

We are tired of the dirty water they are giving us and so we want the municipality to put their commitment to speeding up the provision of water in this area in writing.

We also want the executive mayor to put his proposed short-term measures into writing and expect delivery within 30 days,” said Chuene.

Mathonsi met with the community after they had engaged in a violent service delivery strike which claimed the life of a firefighter when his aircraft crashed after trying to put out a fire which threatened to destroy nearby farms and livestock.

The fire was started by the protestors. During this community meeting, Mathonsi promised to come up with a short and long-term solution to the water problems in this area.

He said the short-term solution will be to continue providing water through water tankers, while his municipality was working on a long-term solution which was to instal new pipelines to provide clean running water.