Jameson Park submitted their grievances regarding service delivery to Lesedi Local Municipality in November.
The mayor, Mluleki Nkosi, signed acceptance of the petition and promised to put words into action.
The grievances highlighted various aspects of the lack of service delivery issues.
Since then, this community has not received feedback from the mayoral committee. Other issues highlighted in Jameson Park’s memorandum included irregular refuse removal, lack of grass-cutting on pavements, the entrance of the suburb, open stands as well as the sports grounds and a lack of communication with the residents of Jameson Park regarding the municipality’s indigent programme.
Before the petition handover, the Jameson Park Concern Committee (JCC) expressed the lack of response from LLM, as there were previous discussion points with the municipal manager and other members of LLM.
The Jameson Park Concern Committee feels LLM is ignoring the petition and concerns are becoming a habit.
At the handover, LLM had a grace of 21 days and LLM has not kept to their word.
During the first part of this year, the JCC visited the municipal offices twice, hoping to meet with the municipal manager S’Busiso Dlamini.
On both times, they have turned away with a guarantee that the officials would phone them.
To date, that has not happened.
In Jameson Park, a lot of the concerns are clearly visible and not something to be swept under the carpet.
The infrastructure and especially the roads are in bad shape, with the pavements, not a safe place to walk.
Various streets in Jameson Park are major concerns, especially in the rainy seasons.
Water does not drain, and trenches are built for the water. They did not do enough to ensure that the water runs into drains.
Other issues highlighted were the stormwater cement covers being removed and not replaced, making it a high risk for the community to get injured.
Streets are caving in and there is no drainage at all.
The community of Jameson Park also highlights they urgently need eye and hearing care as part of the clinic services.
Not everyone has transport to either get to Nigel or Heidelberg.
Furthermore, they don’t maintain the community hall, as windows, doors and walls are broken and the whole area needs attention.
The JCC is worried that homeless people will take it over.
In the library, all the computers were stolen a while ago and have not been replaced.
For the Jameson Park community, the library is sometimes the only place where there is access to the internet and education and is now not an option anymore.
At the sports ground, the grass is not maintained and there are holes and broken bottles everywhere where anyone can get hurt.
The last point the community raised was the tariff charges on municipal accounts.
The community wanted to know what the tariff charges were so that everyone could understand their municipal accounts concerning rates, taxes, basic charges, and water.
“We surely do not want free services, but we do want to know what we are being charged, and it needs to be transparent for all to understand,” one of the JCC concerned members commented.
We asked the LMM for clarification on the matter. No answers were forthcoming.
