With just two days’ notice Mokopane Business Chamber managed to get 127 attendees, mainly from the business community, at its “Mokopane in Crisis” meeting held on a Friday afternoon.
The response was so enthusiastic that under the leadership of the two incumbent DA councillors, Korny Dekker and Yolande Coetzee, clean-up of Mokopane town could start on the Monday immediately thereafter. This was a sure sign that the residents are fed-up with being held hostage by striking municipal workers and the total inability of the municipality itself to act decisively against them.
Wonders never cease. The day after clean-up started, out of the blue an announcement came that workers would be returning to work the next day. Was this out of the goodness of their hearts? I have a nasty suspicion that it was to prevent taxpayers from discovering how little work they actually do and that at least half of their jobs are superfluous.
Civil clean-up progressed at about three times the speed that municipal workers normally work and could have finished sometime on Wednesday. Why then, before the strike, was it necessary for refuse removal to be done on Sundays too, if not for overtime pay? Temporary Municipal Manager, please take note!
Speaking of strikes – our traffic department was also on strike sometime earlier in the year. Did anyone notice? It speaks volumes for how effective its members usually are. Traffic followed its usual flow through town to Moria over the Easter weekend, a couple of accidents occurred, but nothing out of the ordinary, and drivers skipped stop streets (like they always have – and still do). The only difference was the absence of traffic officers lounging under shady trees, enthusiastically supporting a local purveyor of chicken produce. However, when they returned to work, oh my goodness, things really started to happen.
An explosion of new stop signs all over town shot up, to the extent that I have been hard pressed to find a single street in Mokopane without a stop sign on each and every corner. And I always thought the duty of the traffic department was to ensure the safe, smooth flow of traffic in town. About the only thing missing is a photo of every new stop sign in a local newspaper, with the face of a past councillor next to it, claiming personal involvement with its erection, as happened in the not too distant past.
I am always suspicious of sudden unwarranted activity, more so when a little birdie claiming to be from Witbank whispered in my ear. According to the birdie, the size a traffic Department should be is apparently also measured by the number of visible traffic signs in a town, things like stop signs, traffic circles etc. No, he did not tell me if speed humps also count towards this.
With the insistence of the striking municipal workers that they be adjudged to be on the same level as those of the Witbank municipal area, or whatever its name currently is, I perforce wonder.
Is the overabundance of new stop signs in Mokopane an honest effort to hinder the smooth flow of traffic even further, or is there an ulterior motive behind it? Say something to bring them on par with municipal workers looking towards Witbank?
Corinus du Toit is an independent columnist and his opinion and views expressed does not necessarily reflect those of Bosveld, its parent company, nor its sister publications.
