THE community of Giyani has launched a community forum structure aimed at ensuring service delivery from the municipality, amid the continuation of water problems caused by the alleged poor management of water services in the municipality.
The structure, which is led by David Magagani as chairperson, and consists of 16 executive members from different areas in and around Giyani, is called the Greater Giyani Development Forum. It was launched last Thursday at the comprehensive primary school in section F.
According to Magagani, the forum would tackle corruption in the municipality by pushing for a consistent supply of water and quality services for the projects that are managed by the municipality.
“If you look around, you will find that most of projects here are given to friends who, in turn, do shoddy work and leave the beneficiaries to bear the brunt of their mistakes,” explained Magagani.
“We have roads in the municipality that developed potholes even before they were officially opened, not to mention the issue of our water that constantly runs out. We have not had a drop of water since last week, even though the dams are full.”
Magagani said the forum would be a platform to enable the community to stand up against poor service delivery by protesting if need be.
“If that fails, we will take our case further to the public protector for consideration,” he said, adding that they were planning to call a meeting about water problems in Giyani over the weekend.
In a recent public participation event held in section A, Giyani mayor Pat Hlungwani told residents that the water problem in Giyani could not be resolved by the Nandoni pipeline currently under construction, but by renovating the old pipeline infrastructure.
“We’re currently in communication with the district municipality to ensure that we renovate the old pipelines to curb the amount of distribution pipes bursting. These bursts disrupt the supply of water to our residents,” he said.
Asked if the community was justified to introduce its own structure to fight for service delivery, the spokesperson for the Giyani municipality, Steve Mavunda, dismissed the forum as a one-man-led forum aimed to push its own agenda.
“You cannot be justified for launching a forum claiming to seek to fight corruption when there are so many capable state organs assigned with that task,” he said.
“As much as we encourage the community to give input on our day-to-day business, we don’t rely on them to drive our service delivery programmes as mandated by government.”
