Tired of the same menu

Madam – It is obvious that when a letter is published in your newspaper which concerns the municipality the mayor is given the opportunity to comment and his comments are then published with the letter.

I have no problem with such an arrangement but this is also seen as the mayor being able to have the last word and when the letter is seen to be criticising, his comments are usually aggressive, insulting and more often than not, vague and almost irrelevant to the contents of the letter written.

I have often thought that the mayor’s comments to many letters written deserve further reaction and wondered why the general public do not do so. Surely they are not so gullible. Then realisation set in, I am also just as guilty, reason being I just cannot be bothered!

The mayor’s comments on the two letters which appeared in the Advertiser of 26 September 2014 from the ratepayers and “fed up with this s..t” was enough to prompt me to react. In his comments to the ratepayer’s letter that the instruction to place an advert came from Cogta but agrees that the only item that was to be discussed was the Cogta report which according to him, contained names of staff, so he obviously knew beforehand that the meeting would have to be held in committee, therefore WHY the advertisements inviting the public to this council meeting?

I agree with the ratepayers that this was wasteful expenditure. In as far as the accusation that the ratepayers have lost touch with reality there is also the popular saying “look who is talking.”

As for the letter from “fed up with the s..t” the writer says it all in the first paragraph which reads “citizens of Newcastle are in the s..t and being fed s..t”. In the letter the question is also being asked where the R100 million was spent on sewer upgrades which the mayor had said was done in reply to a question asked under “ask the mayor” (Advertiser 12 September 2014) where the question clearly related to overflowing sewers and the mayor’s reply to “Fed up with the s..t”” that this money was actually spent on upgrading the sewer plant is a clear indication of what the public are being fed.

The reminder that residents will remember that Aviary Hill used to have human faeces floating in the street, which in fact happened in Impala Drive in Hutten Heights, implying that since he took over leadership this type of incident does not happen, Talk about LOST TOUCH WITH REALITY!

One has only to look at the last two publications of the Sun. The fact of the matter is that in the last number of years, despite the number of warnings, Council have allowed development to take place (which has also been a matter of self praise) without any attempt what so ever to renew or upgrade any sewers with the result that the failing infrastructure which is worsening, while at the same time being overloaded because of the developments, has caused so many incidents of sewer overflowing that this has become so commonplace that it is almost acceptable now and seldom even makes news.

Yes, there is much to be proud of in our town, but this is thanks not only to the present leadership, but to the past leaders and we are tired of being fed s..t that it is only since this mayor took over office that any progress was made in this town. One could also list many things that are taking place during his term of office that are definitely NOT complimentary.

Obviously if this letter is to be published, the mayor will once again be able to have the last word and it would be interesting to know what s..t we will be fed this time!

TIRED OF THE SAME MENU.

Response from Mayor, Afzul Rehman:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond, once again! I sometimes wonder how much more work I would actually get done if I didn’t need to repeat myself so many times. The writer seems to be contradicting themselves, first they mention that my responses are “usually aggressive, insulting and more often than not vague and almost irrelevant to the contents of the letter written”, but then mention that they simply can’t be bothered to respond.

I suppose I have to double up on my sarcasm then. The fact is, this letter is not computer generated, it is written by a human being. And like everyone else, when someone writes letters like “fed up with this sh#t”, I also feel the need to be as rude as the writer. It may not be very mayoral, but if you want me to personally respond to queries, and not some hack in an office somewhere, then that’s what you are going to get.

Let me repeat: the advert placed in the newspaper “INFORMING” the community that a special council meeting will take place, was because of an instruction by Cogta!

What in that sentence does not make sense? They INSTRUCTED us to inform the community, and we complied. This was not a gala dinner invite, where you arrived and was turned away. This was an advert informing you that a meeting takes place, so that we meet the legislative requirements. I wish I had a flip chart so that I could draw a clearer picture.

The second issue mentioned is the sewer issue. How am I being vague? The question was, where did you spend the R100 million, and my response was: to upgrade the waste treatment plants that serve the suburbs! I thought I answered the question directly. I went further to mention that the network itself needs upgrading, and we have placed monies in this budget for it.

Come on! Firstly I’m going to repeat the figure: we spent R100 MILLION on sewer plants in the west!! Do you know of any other mayor and admin who has even ten percent of that? Do you realise that if we didn’t bite the political bullet and spend that money, NO ONE was allowed to build, or extend their homes in this town? Do you realise that all

those new people that came to live in NN because of developments like the Mall, Builders Warehouse, Lanxess and many others would have had no option to build their own homes? (Which route the association was pushing)

Do you realise, dear writer, that because of previous mayors and administrations neglect, these upgrades cost a whole lot more money?

Do you realise that we have placed over R5-million in the current budget and applied for over R30-million of grant funding to change the pipe network, thus ensuring less downtime for water and sewer? Do you know of another mayor or administration to take this step? Do you know of another mayor or administration that continues to spend vast amounts of capital budgets in some suburbs, even though they continuously vote against us, write rude letters to us, and generally fail to respect even the office we hold.

Do you know dear writer, that the reason I get to have the last say on letters is because, love it or hate it, vote or not, I am your mayor.