Finsbury residents march to municipal buildings with memorandum
Residents of Finsbury are angry, frustrated and desperate, and embarked on a peaceful protest on Tuesday. These are the reasons ...
Angry and frustrated residents of Finsbury handed over a memorandum of their grievances to management of the Rand West City Local Municipality (RWCLM) on Tuesday October 26.
Although they preferred giving the document to RWCLM Executive Mayor Brenda Mahuma, the memorandum was received, signed and acknowledged by MMC for Finance, Tina Grobler. She also promised the residents that Mahuma would receive the memorandum by the same evening and respond to their grievances.
In the memorandum shared with the Herald, residents decried three major issues namely green letters (municipal bills); cable theft; and the status of the Montrose City Mega Development.
Directing their grievances to the Mayor, they said, “We, the residents of Ward 2 (Finsbury), held a meeting to discuss the concerns surrounding the community. We’ve decided to send a memorandum of grievances to your office so that we may urgently address the following issues:
• Green letters (municipal bills)
The community of Ward 2 believes that it cannot pay the amount of money that is being required by the municipality, because these amounts are based on estimates,” the memorandum read.
In the memorandum, the community said they’ve been labelled as a grey and distressed area, and have been given empty promises by the municipality for years.
One of the reasons they want the municipal bills to be scrapped and pay a flat rate is because many people in the area are unemployed.
• Cable theft
In the memorandum the community complained about continuous cable theft causing unprecedented power outages in the area that affect business and cause damage to appliances.
• Montrose City Mega Development
According to the memorandum, none of residents of Ward 2 had been allocated any houses or units in the Montrose City Mega Development project that was started in 2017.
They said they didn’t understand why residents could be allocated housing in similar projects such as Dan Tlome and Affri-Village Mega City.
Responding to some issues, Grobler said, “We’ve received the memorandum and will address all these issues and give a response back to the community.”
However, Grobler also warned that at this stage, the municipality had no funds to meet some of the community’s demands, such as the installation of new water meters so that residents could be charged accurately as per their water consumption or usage.
At this stage the municipality isn’t in any position to buy prepaid water meters, and she asked on behalf of the municipality that the community bear with them until they get funds from the Provincial Government.
Responding to issue of cable theft, she said cable thieves target areas that aren’t protected.
We fix and replace these cables, but these crooks keep going to different places stealing them; they’re targeting places that aren’t protected and it’s been difficult to foil them,” Grobler said.
