PHOLA – Residents are at it again about the construction of  local bridges and this time they said they are not backing down.

A few months ago they complained about shoddy construction work of two bridges in the village and demanded that the construction company responsible to stop working until Mbombela Local Municipality’s intervention.

After yesterday’s rain, one of the bridges they complained about was affected and is now at the verge of collapsing and now the community members demand that the company should be permanently stopped because according to them, the contractor is clueless about the quality of work that should be dedicated to the bridge.

“It’s us who are going to face problems at a later stage and we are not going to fold our arms and watch people’s tax money go down the drain,” said an angry community member, Morris Maluka.

Maluka added that they were surprised why the municipality was not taking steps to address this matter.

“We suspect the issue of tender irregularities could be the reason why they are not acting,” he added.

Responding to the publication’s enquiry, Mbombela Local Municipality’s spokesperson, Mr Joseph Ngala said this was not the first time complaints had been raised by the community regarding the project.

He added that some of the matters had since been dealt with and the construction company as well as the project manager were aware of the concrete issues.

“The contractor is well aware of the issue and just when he was about to fix it, the residents stopped the project and their action is only going to delay the project and incur additional costs,” said Ngala.

He added that as much as they appreciated policing by the community, the contractor needed to be given an opportunity to rectify the mistakes.

Ngala concluded by saying that they were going to engage with the MMC for infrastructure development and ensure that this matter was resolved so that the contractor could go ahead with the project.