MBOMBELA – Being labelled as the “Capital city of service-delivery protests” has raised serious concerns.
According to MEC Ms Violet Siwela, some of the protests have cost the government millions of rands.
With community members damaging property as a way of voicing their anger, clinics and police stations as well as libraries have been burned down.
Mpumalanga News also learned that such violent activities will come to an end, one way or another.
This after the MEC for human settlements, Ms Violet Siwela, sounded a stern warning when she launched Operation Vuka Sisebente – identified as a vehicle to speed up service delivery.
Speaking during the launch at Nutting House Lodge on Friday, Siwela stated that government will no longer go back to communities and rebuild those structures that were burned down during service-delivery protests.
“As government, we are are determined to address the imbalances of the past, but there are those community members who are costing government millions of rands by burning or damaging property, we are not going back,” she said.
Siwela called upon community members to voice their needs in a decent manner, as damaging the little that they have would do no justice.
She said there were some community members who could not live without these buildings and services that were being destroyed.
“In some places children are forced to stay at home because the community burned down the school. Even during the ‘taking legislature to the people’ campaign, numerous citizens are still complaining about service delivery, but let us use the right channels to communicate with government,” she said.
This publication reported that some of the structures that were burned down in Barberton during the service delivery protests in 2012, which include a satellite police station and a youth centre, have still not been renovated or rebuilt.
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