Residents of the Khutsong Extension 3 area still complain that the service they receive from the Merafong City Local Municipality leaves much to be desired. “There are no working taps in this area, so residents have to connect directly to the water pipes themselves if they want to get water. Now, the municipality refuses to assist us because they say we are illegally connected. But it’s the only thing we can do to survive,” Mr Bizarre Mmowa, a resident of the Chris Hani informal housing area near Extension 3, told the Herald this week. He, and other residents, also took the Herald to places where water from some of the communal taps was leaking onto illegal electricity connections. These, too, have been done because the residents have no other option. Many of the streets in the area, all of which are the playground of small children, were lined with illegal electrical cables when the newspaper visited the site during the week. “The municipality established a special committee in 2011 to look into the matter of supplying electricity to us. That was four years ago and nothing has been done ever since. Once it starts raining, many of these cables will be lying in water, making it a very dangerous situation,” Mmowa added. In the meantime, both of the informal housing area’s street lights are out of order. According to the residents, this poses huge problems for law-abiding residents who have to leave for work as early as 03:00. As the area is one of the worst crime spots in Khutsong, the darkness is the ideal cover for gangsters and other criminals to attack. “These problems are serious. We cannot live like this,” another resident, Mr Maphuti Khubeka said. Another one of the hazards that residents have to live with is the severe sewage problems that have plagued the

Extension 3 area for so long and have still not been solved. Among other things, a storm water ditch of about two metres deep has been completely flooded with sewage after it was left to stream from yards for months. This ditch is alongside the main route that children from the nearby Hlanganani Primary School use to get to, and from, school. In some places near the school, sewage has even started to stream from the canal, flooding the nearby veld. In others, municipal and government workers have dug ditches to divert some of the sewage to other areas, instead of solving the problem. Ms Irene Ntaopane Basane, another resident, whose yard has been flooded with sewage for some time, told the newspaper that municipal workers cannot

do the job. “People from the municipality have been here, but they said that they are unable to fix the problem because it is too difficult to do so,”

she said. The Herald took the matters raised by the residents to the Merafong City Local Municipality. “Mr Thulani Bonkolo, the acting manager of Water and Sanitation Section, has not yet replied on the sewerage issue, but a formal reply will be provided as soon as possible.Regarding the issue of darkness, the public lighting that was provided via high mast in that area was vandalised by the community and the cables stolen. They were replaced numerous times with the same end result. An Eskom project for the electrification of the informal areas in Khutsong has already been registered and is currently at the pre-engineering stage,” a spokesperson for the municipality replied on Tuesday afternoon.