The Gatvol Campaign is gaining momentum and as a result the City of Mbombela (CoM) embarks on a Service Delivery Drive.

The CoM’s executive mayor, Sibongile Makhushe-Mazibuko, said the service delivery drive was introduced to the communities a long time ago. She also said it has nothing to do with Gatvol, but that the municipality is doing what they are mandated to do by the constitution.

According to her, it used to be called the Mayoral Imbizo, when the municipality embarked on a special service delivery drive for a month across all its 45 wards.

“We decided to change it from Mayoral Imbizo, because we wanted to focus on service delivery and make sure that we attended to the residents’ concerns. To kick off, we will work for two weeks per zone after experiencing months of constant rains that not only destroyed most of our roads, but also turned the grass in parks and on the side of the road into bushes,” she said.

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Makhushe-Mazibuko said the drive started in the central region, which includes Mbombela and its residential areas. “As promised before, we are going to attend to all grievances. In Mbombela, we are working to fix all the faulty streetlights and the potholes, cutting the grass, removing illegal traders and cleaning up the litter. We do this because our people have been complaining and we have not been ignoring them. We are responding with action,” she said.

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She added that the Service Delivery Drive is led by councillors of every ward in the CoM, because they know what the residents need. Each councillor is required to be available during the drive to ensure all grievances are attended to. “However, it will not change the daily service delivery the municipality provides. Now we are fast-tracking the backlog, since we did not provide some services due to the recent heavy rains. We are also not outsourcing the service; instead, it will be done by internal staff,” Makhushe-Mazibuko said.

She also calls on community members to allow municipal officials to attend to their grievances; in some instances a road would be closed while they are patching potholes or a truck would be blocking an entrance while repairing a streetlight.

The ward councillors welcomed this campaign as it would finally address the burning issues the people have been complaining about for a long time.