VANDERBIJLPARK – But the embattled Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM), seems to have one of the most non-existing law enforcement agencies in all municipalities in the country.
And this was confirmed by the executive committee of the cash strapped municipality during one of the latest Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and budget, public participation meeting held at the mayor’s parlour in Vanderbijlpark recently.
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The number one citizen of Emfuleni, Mayor Sipho Radebe and his executive, confessed that the department is costing the municipality millions in revenue collection and is the reason for all lawlessness problems in the region.
Due to the missing department, the municipality is now faced with unending corrupt officials, ungovernable municipality due to illegal street traders including illegal tuck shops and non-compliant businesses.
Mushrooming problematic properties, illegal buildings, and hijacked building are other headaches the municipality is yet to deal with entirely.
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Speaking during the meeting, Radebe said the municipality is under attack and the missing law enforcing department is making it hard for the municipality to deal with the chaos.
Radebe was responding to the inputs applied by gathered residents who complained mainly on mushrooming illegal spaza shops in Bedworthpark and surrounding areas in their precinct.
Thamsanqa Sangweni a resident in Vanderbijlpark said there are spazas everywhere in their area.
“We always complain about illegal development by spazashops, communal student homes and residents and nothing is being done. You sent read ants to disconnect the community which you failing to provide services to,” he said.
“How do you reconnect residents when there are growing residences with fraudulently installed electricity and illegal developments,” he said.
Sangweni said corrupt officials are not being arrested because there is no bylaw department.
“Money has been misused by the previous executive and we haven’t seen the executive being arrested or paying for their thuggery instead we are made to be made to pay for services we are not getting,” he added.
Mbuyiselo Kantso, MMC of Agriculture, Local Economic Development Planning and Tourism said bylaw is dead.
“The issue of law enforcement and bylaws in our municipality is a dead thing. That is why we are facing so many illegal problems, and if you check our towns, you will realize that the department doesn’t exist.
By law department is one department that shouldn’t be sleeping. We are supposed to be having a massive visibility from that department, yet we don’t even have one. Without bylaws it’s going to be difficult to enforce any law in our municipality,” he said.
“Any government must have an enforcement arm so that things are done in the right way. We know that without enforcers we are not going to win any battle,” he added.
