FROM ONE “LOCAL VAAL PRESIDENT” TO ANOTHER PRESIDENT:
Dear Mr. President
Allow me to enlighten you on our area……So you may know a river runs through Emfuleni and could be a highway of maritime commerce and tourism – and a major revenue source for your bling-addicted Government.
Just like all our other roads and industrial/business in other areas dissolving before our eyes due to lack of service delivery and corruption we experience daily in the Vaal.
Except that the beautiful Vaal River is somehow confused by officialdom with a liquid sewer channel, and as full of ‘you know what’ as any incompetent Government politician or official posing as a public servant.
That’s because every single function and department of ELM is dysfunctional despite being under partial administration by Gauteng Province for years.
Allow me to therefore invite you personally to don your Speedo costume and take a boat trip down and swim in the Vaal River. This will no doubt do much to reverse the persistent perception that the Vaal is not a desirable investment destination due to barely-functioning services.
Because this polluted river is a metaphor for all the accumulated ills of the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) and also, lately, that other parastatal entity chewing up funds and budget to no apparent purpose on sewage infrastructure rehabilitation, the aptly-named Rand Water.
Mr President, this is all you need to see to determine what’s wrong across-the-board in the Emfuleni region – so I suggest you skip your mass meeting with possibly riotous residents also wanting inconveniently obvious answers and go directly to the Vaal River with organised business representatives.
The GTCoC has a standing invitation to all visiting Government politicians to swim in the Vaal in order to test progress of the official multi-billion Rand – and thus missing – industry that has sprung up around your Government’s alleged efforts to address the problem of degraded or even completely missing infrastructure and pollution clean-up efforts.
Strangely, neither Honourable Senzo Mchunu or David Mahlobo, whom you respectively and impudently refer to as Minister and Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, nor the entire Army, nor ERWAT nor Rand Water nor ELM, nor Lindiwe Sisulu, whose high heels would enable her to wade and carry any number of tourists through an oil slick with ease, have seen fit to accept this invitation.
After the Vaal River trip – during which of course you will be served refreshments along with your supplied nose peg – we have something you and Honourable Bheki Cele, currently impersonating as your Minister of Police, will appreciate, which is a display of 8000 metres of empty trenches dug specially for you Mr President.
That’s a conservative estimate of how much electrical cable copper thieves have recently stolen in Emfuleni but by no means close to all, thus bringing water and sanitation infrastructure along with most services in the Vaal to a grinding halt but at least providing all those government agencies with something to do.
Our businesses and employees have suffered hugely from the twin curse of cable theft and electrical infrastructure mismanagement by ELM and now Rand Water using cable theft as an excuse for no progress.
Power disruptions have been so frequent in Emfuleni towns that it seems ELM is trying to load shed taxpayers and businesses in favour of criminal syndicates.
What exactly, Mr President, do politicians and officials not understand about not pumping in billions for new equipment and then just waiting to see it stolen? We are sure you Mr President will agree on the need for professional intelligence capacity not linked to any State agency whatsoever.
Yet both ELM and Rand Water have invested hundreds of millions in static and response security services, who always end up as crime victims themselves. Mr President, would you be prepared to entrust your protection – not that you need any as you are loved by all – to someone earning a pittance and with no support?
Of course not – you would simply just speed away!
But do bring Honourable Bheki along with you – we are sure we can tape his hat in place as he takes a deep dive into crime and fecal grime in the Vaal – no doubt this will be a welcome diversion from displacing Zama Zamas to Emfuleni from Krugersdorp and having to see a gutted Parliament he and the SA Police Service failed to protect.
But just promise us this, Mr President, no more speeches on what you intend to do about the Vaal. We need to be respected, and this letter is a plea for help to restore this Southern Corridor to its intended beauty and prosperity.
As a last word, Mr President, we are on a ticking time bomb in the Vaal and we would like to warn government ahead of time. Unemployment and crime are escalating beyond any control. We need actions and not a plan Sir.
Klippies Kritzinger
GTCoC: President/CEO
