Tshwane metro is ‘collapsing’ under administrators – DA

Speaking at a virtual briefing DA mayoral candidate Randall Williams on Wednesday said during the past week, DA councillors were flooded with complaints from residents on power outages and ‘poor response’ times from the metro.

Some parts of Mamelodi have been without power for more than a week while Eersterust, parts of Pretoria East, the Moot and Soshanguve went three to four days without power.

“This is shocking, particularly during what was one of the coldest weeks of the year. There were over 200 power outages reported last week alone,” he said.

Williams said this was mainly due to the lack of direct access for ward councillors to the metro after being stripped of their roles.

He blamed the under-collection in revenue of the metro on the administrators, which Cogta MEC Lebogang Maile previously said was due to the Covid-19 economic downfall impact.

Williams further said some of the metro’s planning and building control offices were not operating. He said this could generate month-long backlogs in planning approvals for the construction sector.

“Rates clearance process was unresponsive, as the metro failed to issue clearance certificates,” he said.

This has further delayed the sale and purchasing of houses across the metro, which would result in the metro losing a lot of money alongside residents. He went on to define the state of governance in the Tshwane as chaotic – the same way which the metro was defined by the provincial government before the metro was put under administration.

In response, Tshwane metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the metro?s planning and building control offices were temporarily closed while in the process of ensuring that all its buildings comply with Covid-19 regulations to ensure employees? safety.

He said all the buildings would be officially opened as soon as the occupational health and safety act compliance certificate would be issued for each building.

“We hope the compliance certificate will be issued on 29 June. Over 30% of the officials in both divisions are working remotely from home to ensure uninterrupted service delivery. In terms of service delivery backlog, we would like to assure everyone that the Department of Economic Development and Spatial Planning is working tirelessly to ensure there are no backlogs.”

Meanwhile, the head administrator Mpho Nawa bashed the DA’s claims that governance has gotten worse in Tshwane.

“The claims are not true,” Nawa said, adding the power outages were due to a long-existing crisis of cable theft and illegal electricity connections which the metro was trying to ‘resolve’ by setting up a law-enforcement centre that would deal with these problems.

“In Mamelodi, we removed illegal electricity connections while other areas suffered due to cable theft. As the administration team, we wish not to meddle in politics,” he said.

“We are busy trying to fix a number of things in the metro which was a mess before we got here.”

He said his team was to meet with the Hawks to investigate several administrative issues that faced the metro before it was put under administration.

“We have done several operations which the DA were not able to complete while they were there. We completed the budget which they had not. We are simply doing our jobs.”

Last week, the provincial government expressed contentment in the performance of the administrators’ governance in the metro. The administrators have been governing the metro for more than the set 90 days due to ongoing legal appeals between the DA and the provincial government.