Umjindi Municipality honoured with Aids award

BARBERTON – For the second successive year, Umjindi Municipality has been honoured as being the second best in the Ehlanzeni region during the third District Aids Council Lekgotla Awards, which was recently held at Greenway Woods Resort in White River.

Ehlanzeni District Municipality comprises five municipalities. They are Nkomazi, Bushbuckridge, Thaba Chweu, Mbombela and Umjindi. They were all evaluated. Nkomazi was voted the best municipality HIV/Aids council. This is for the second time that it was voted the second. It was honoured with a trophy and three certificates.
They were for categories which the municipality had excelled in. These include being chosen the top championing Aids council, best municipality in championing sector involvement and representation and top in the category of championing the implementation of HIV/Aids strategies. Speaker Vusi Mkhatshwa was in attendance to receive the acknowledgement on behalf of the council. These rewards are a great milestone for it considering that the local Aids council was operating on a shoestring budget.

Olga Nkosi, Umjindi HIV/Aids coordinator, said the aim when it comes to HIV/Aids was to receive zero tolerance in fatalities, zero tolerance in discrimination against people infected or affected by the pandemic and zero tolerance in child born infected. She said more stakeholders are needed to be involved to fight against the pandemic.

“HIV/Aids effects all of us. Businesses, families, government, even the municipality. When people employed by businesses got sick, they stay absent from work and businesses profit suffers. Families are losing breadwinners.
Government is forced to look after orphans and the municipalities suffer rent payers. It is no longer the issue of department of health only, but all stakeholders need to work together,” said Nkosi.