R300 area soon to be relocated, says municipality

Lolo Madonsela

Water, roads and housing challenges Water, roads and housing challenges faced by the community of R300 informal settlement near Bhekuzulu may soon be a thing of the past as AbaQulusi Local Municipality gears up to relocate this community.
Over the years, the community has been complaining about a lack of service delivery in the area. Residents say they have felt neglected by the municipality, as they would go for days without tankers delivering water to them.
Now that the world faces the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for water has multiplied and so the municipality is making efforts to ensure that this community and other areas like it are issued with JoJo tanks.
Last month, two 5000-litre JoJo tanks were installed in the R300 area and recently, Municipal Manager Bonga Ntanzi announced that they were looking into relocating this community.
Speaking at the Joint Operations Committee (JOC) meeting last week, Ntanzi said, “Through this disaster, something good has come out. We are looking into housing people from population-dense areas such as R300 and other areas. We have been struggling to service that community because the land does not belong to us, but to Transnet. However, we have managed to identify land where we can relocate our people to, but the matter is yet to be presented before Council for approval; we are hopeful that Council will indeed approve this request.”

Also read: Leading the fight with water provision

Another community that will be relocated is Boyana, as the residents are living on private-owned land belonging to a farmer. Other communities such as Dumpside (also known as kwa D) will not be relocated, as the land belongs to the municipality, but will also benefit from the housing project that is in the pipeline. Ntanzi indicated that the sanitizing of population-dense areas has been completed, so now the focus will be on rural and informal settlement areas with low populations. He added that an amount of R6 million was approved by Council three weeks ago to be re-prioritised for sanitation and that the order to start ablution construction has been issued. Additionally, mobile toilets will be dispatched to those communities in desperate need.
He concluded that the cleaning up of town has commenced and will continue to take place. In the coming weeks, the clean-up project will move to townships to clean up illegal dumping in these communities and also create awareness around the dangers of illegal dumping.

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