CONTRARY to provincial government’s policy of ‘Sikhokha Ngesikhathi – we pay on time’, the Pongola office of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has been locked and chained owing to non-payment of rent.
The landlord shut the offices after the department reportedly failed to pay the rent for at least two months.
The department has, according to a Democratic Alliance (DA) statement, ignored the landlord’s requests to rectify the matter.,
Francois Rodgers, DA spokesman on agriculture, said, ‘It is unacceptable that provincial responsibilities should be disrupted over what appears to be nothing more than administrative incompetency’.
Rodgers has requested Cyril Xaba, KZN MEC for Agriculture and Rural Affairs, to ‘urgently engage with his counterpart in Public Works to determine how this bizarre situation arose’.
Moreover, Rodgers has called for the relevant official to be held accountable should the closure of the office be the result of ‘administrative bungling’.
The Zululand Observer requested a response from Department of Rural Development and Land Reform Communications Officer Sipho Dlamini, but he declined to comment.
