Residents of Mandela Village in Wesselton are struggling with service delivery and residents make do with two communal toilets and taps.
The informal settlement situated near Qambekile Primary School is riddled with sewerage problems, deteriorating roads and illegal dumpsites.
It is a stark contrast to the houses surrounding it that have toilets and taps.
A total of 18 people live on the settlement with two structures of four toilets in each corner used as ablution facilities.
However, only one is being used as the rest are broken.
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One of the communal taps the community uses, is situated behind one of the toilets, while sewage flows down the street.
The road, Mavundla Street, once a tar road and now filled with holes, floods when storms occur.
Mr Vusi Dlamini, community leader, recalled how a car got stuck in one of the holes in the street when tasked with fetching a sick person.
“We had to make an alternative plan to get the resident to hospital and had to carry him all the way to a car parked three streets from the settlement,” he said.
Mr Dlamini is at his wit’s end trying to find solutions to their problems.
“I have contacted the municipality for many years and even went to the offices myself,” he also said.
“They promise to come, but we have heard nothing so far.”
Residents were given the land with stands marked out for low cost housing (RDPs), but none were forthcoming, prompting residents to build their own temporary structures.
It is a ongoing problem every summer when yards are flooded and one family living with a disabled person can be unable to manoeuvre a wheelchair out of the yard.
The Highvelder contacted the Msukaligwa Municipality, but no response was received at the time of going to press.
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