The department of public works has still not provided the newspaper with any comment on whether the police station’s crumbling wall will be fixed. No comments have been received on whether the court’s generator, which has been out of order for months, will be fixed. Although the court building’s lift was repaired last week, a sign indicated that it was out of order again on Monday
The city’s police station’s south-western wall has started to disintegrate. In April, eyewitnesses reported seeing bricks fall from where they came loose on the seventh floor. Mr Zwelethu Twala’s comment pointed out that the situation was serious, “If a brick falls on someone’s head, it will crack his skull. He’ll have blood on his brain and may die. This is very dangerous.”
VIDEO: What may happen to you if a brick falls on your head from Mbombela SAPS’ seventh floor?
The paper directed queries to public works, which remained unanswered. In March a high-profile case had to be postponed for two weeks in the city’s Circuit High Court, located in the Nelspruit Magistrate’s Court building. Load-shedding motivated the postpone-ment of the case against a man and woman from Masoyi charged with 49 counts of rape and assault.
As the court building was equipped with a generator, this did not necessarily have to be the case. However, the generator wasn’t of much use as it was broken. Adv Mthunzi Mhaga, spokesman for justice and correctional development, said the part that was broken had been ordered from Volvo. “This part needs to reach South Africa from overseas. Once it has been received, the appointed service provider will be able to fix the generator.” Public works was identified as the department responsible for the ordering of the generator and the fixing thereof. Recent load-shedding and consequent postponement of cases, however, proved that the generator had not yet been fixed.
Nelspruit Post queried this and also asked the department to comment on the fact that the court building’s lift was regularly out of order. After it was repaired last week, a hand- written sign indicated that the lift was “temporary out of order.”
This follows previous signs that read: “lift temporally out of order.” The department has not provided the newspaper with comment yet.
