VIDEO: Hillside residents take to the streets for services
Residents of Hillside Promosa took their frustrations with service delivery to the streets and held a protest from around 22:00 on Tuesday, 6 October to Wednesday morning.
“The municipality makes promises, but their promises are lies,” said Isaac Butha Kleinhaans, the committee leader of the Hillside community. Residents of Hillside Promosa took their frustrations with service delivery to the streets and held a protest from around 22:00 on Tuesday, 6 October to Wednesday morning.
They barricaded the road to the dumping site in Promosa. The residents of portion 1 and 2 of Hillside say many promises about the provision of services have been made since 2019. However, their needs have not been met to date.
Kleinhaans says the committee has been to meetings with the relevant municipal officials on several occasions since 2019 and has been met with empty promises. The residents say there has been no clean running water or sanitation, infrastructure or electricity since last December.
Portion 1 has, at least, received eight communal taps but they still have no toilets, electricity or roads. This area was established in March last year. Since Portion 2 was established in October or November, no permanent services have been delivered. According to a resident, a senior official in housing had instructed that services had to be provided by December 2019. These included basic needs like clean running water and sanitation, among others.
The residents alleged that none of these had been delivered since then. Due to the delay, the community members of Portion 2 were compelled even to build the communal ablutions themselves. In the evenings, they used to use buckets or plastic bags and throw them out in the veld or in one of the two toilets the next morning. In March, during the national lockdown, the municipality supplied a Jojo tank for the Portion 2 community.
The community says it has not been refilled since June or July. Besides, the water was not fit for human consumption as there were worms in it.
Kleinhaans says a meeting took place between the director of infrastructure, the head of housing and community representatives on Monday, 28 September. The officials made several promises and said they would be fulfilled by Tuesday, 6 October. They allegedly went to the site, but the committee received no feedback, causing the members to engage in the protest.
The community leader alleges that he spoke to the municipal manager (MM) on the evening of 6 October. While the MM denied any knowledge of the community’s concerns, the residents claim that he had been on-site to assess and allocate stands on many occasions. From now on, the community wants the municipality to set deadlines and adhere to them strictly. The Herald sent an enquiry to the municipality and will publish the response upon receipt.
According to a ward councillor’s post on social media, the waste removal services for Wednesday could be disrupted by barricaded roads. “The waste will only be removed until the trucks are full,” she stated. The police from the public order policing (POP) unit were at the scene.
