The municipality has, once again, failed to pay the service provider, leaving maggots crawling around in the toilets that haven’t been cleaned for four months.

The overwhelming stench and the health risks pushed this long-suffering community over the edge on Saturday and they took the toilets to the side of the road and threatened to tip them over if the executive mayor did not intervene.

The Ikageng police were monitoring the situation when the mayor sent a truck to service the toilets.

Thembisile Tekani, the community leader, says he alerted the council about the toilets that were not being serviced a long time ago. ‘Their response was that they would find out what the delay was about. Then the service provider informed me that they have not been paid for four months and I forwarded the text to the council.

‘We could not take the smell any longer and so we took them out. The funny thing was that the truck was suddenly available to come clean the toilets after we embarked on this protest,’ he said.

 

The mayoral spokesperson, Victor Boqo, says the delay was caused by a technical error when the municipality processed the payment of the service providers.

‘The services providers will be paid any time from now after our IT department fixes the error,’ he said.

He added that the executive mayor, Kgotso Khumalo will be meeting the Marikana committee this on Wednesday (yesterday) to find an amicable solution and ‘soon we will have a public meeting with the entire community’.