Emfuleni municipality in Sedibeng, Gauteng is struggling with poor infrastructure and providing basic water and sewer services. The DA claims that it is going to have a closer look at R65m spent on overtime and R200m spent on service providers in the municipality.

DA Constituency head of Emfuleni North, Kingston Chabalala MPL says he will be engaging with councillors in the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) to propose that the municipality must consider scrapping the outsourcing of service providers and instead use in-house resources to fix the persistent water and sewer issues.

Chabalala says the ELM continues to waste millions of rand instead of fixing the water infrastructure to reduce water loses.

He adds that Gauteng MEC Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, Lebogang Maile, recently indicated that R65m was spent on overtime for Metsi-a-Lekoa employees in the last four financial years.

“There’s no proof on how the money was spent,”  says Chabalala.

To add salt to injuries, Chabalala says residents have to bear the brunt of poor service delivery and that the streets continue to be filled with sewer spillage and water leakage.

“At least over R221m have been spend on service providers. There’s allegations that some of the service providers are owned by members of the ANC.”

Chabalala warns that the DA will take a closer look at the matter through various sources of information.