ERMELO – Residents say complaints about water outages and sewage spills are disappearing into a “black hole”, with the Msukaligwa municipal call centre allegedly failing to respond to most reports.

Community representatives Lourens de Beer and Sonicha Korczynski have formally complained to the executive mayor, Precious Mapulane Nkosi, and municipal manager Maqhawe Kunene, claiming that nearly all complaints submitted through the call centre and official WhatsApp lines go unanswered.

According to their grievance, residents are often not issued reference numbers, making it difficult to track or escalate service delivery complaints.

Logs reportedly show repeated reports of raw sewage flowing into the Pet Dam and water outages lasting several days, with no acknowledgement from the municipality.

The community administrators have called on the municipality to reinstate proper complaint procedures, including logging incidents and issuing reference numbers.

Attempts to obtain comment from municipal officials were unsuccessful by the time of publication.

Read more about the legal concerns raised in the grievance, including references to the Municipal Systems Act, Constitution and Batho Pele principles, in the Highvelder’s printed edition.