Update: CoE responds to complaints about poor services

Editor’s comment – City of Ekurhuleni commented on a letter published by GCN last week from Nicolien Mahoney in which she raised several concerns about service delivery.

Mahoney’s concerns included sewer, stormwater, electricity, water, call centre, noise pollution and refuse.

CoE spokesperson, Zweli Dlamini, commented as follows:

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Sewer department
The City has been getting an excessive number of sewer complaints that result from challenges of vandalism to the sewer reticulation network.

It must be noted that due to theft of sewer manhole covers along the servitude and sewer reticulation gets exposed to foreign objects, which obstructs flows and causes blockages.

That ultimately gives challenges to the manual rodding technical team to unblock the lines and resort to a hydro-blasting mechanical unblocking system.

We, therefore, urge communities to report missing manholes to the CoE to eliminate possible sewer blockages

Water department
The City must provide water pressure not less than 2.4 bars and also in the by-laws requests consumers to have storage tanks, and booster pump for those higher buildings to complement their pressure.

It must be noted that CoE supplies water from Rand Water and supply gets stored at the different reservoir sites with return capacity more than 24 hours, and the supply then gets distributed to different zones of supplies.

Building that requires excessive pressure to get to the top of the high raised building must have a booster pump to complement such otherwise such pressure may compromise the integrity of the network and even the consumers’ network.

Disturbance of peace, noise pollution
The Air Quality and Noise Management Section of the Health & Social Development Department take note of the concerns raised by residents of Germiston Central Business District (CBD) regarding noise pollution they were/are exposed to.

Although the Air Quality and Noise Management Section was not aware of the current noise pollution problem in Germiston CBD, the matter will, however, be prioritized and addressed accordingly.

The said Section of the Health and Social Development Department will urgently arrange a joint intervention with the EMPD to abate the noise pollution, which emanates from Pubs in Germiston CBD.

Note that permitting of pubs does not fall within the ambit of the Air Quality and Noise Management Section. The said section only regulates excessive noise emanating from such businesses amongst others.

Contact the newsroom by emailing: 
Marietta Lombard (Editor) germistoncitynews@caxton.co.za,  or (Journalists) Busi Vilakazi busiv@caxton.co.za