HIGHVELD – Mr David Mabuza, deputy president, distanced himself from the electricity crisis in eMbalenhle.
This is despite Mr Mabuza’s prior commitment to the residents of eMbalenhle that he would have come back before Christmas last year to address the matter.
He made this promise in November when he was in the area for the South African National Aids Council (SANAC) Plenary District Outreach Programme on HIV prevention. Residents attempted to disrupt that meeting.
Mr Mabuza now says that his commitment was not to take away the responsibility from the province, the district and local municipality in addressing the challenges.
Ms Matshepo Seedat, the deputy president’s spokesman, told Ridge Times: “The deputy president in the same meeting, committed that the Premier of Mpumalanga, the district mayor and the local mayor would respond to the service delivery issues raised by the community.
“On his part, he committed to visit the community in the future to engage further.”
The residents’ struggle with power outages in the area still continued after Mr Mabuza’s promise.
The recent load shedding implemented by Eskom has also added more problems.
The municipality has since appointed Bigen Africa as service provider to upgrade the electricity substation in eMbalenhle.
This service provider was supposed to be finished in October last year; however the project is still underway.
Mr Felani Mndebele, municipal manager, recently said the service provider informed him that the project now 99 per cent completed.
The Govan Mbeki Municipality also blamed the power cuts on the notified maximum demand implemented by Eskom, electricity theft and the non-payment of services.
Some residents in Bethal and eMzinoni decided to take the municipality to court for the constant power outages.
In the meanwhile, the Gert Sibande District Municipality (GSDM) intervened and signed an agreement to help the municipality with the electricity problems in the area.
The memorandum of understanding between the GSDM and Govan Mbeki Municipality is hoped to bring solutions to the electricity problems in these two towns.
GMM has been battling to supply electricity to these areas and decided to request the intervention of GSDM.
The district municipality will now be an implementing agent for the management of electricity for the two areas.
The memorandum of understanding provides all the activities for which the GSDM, as an implementing agent, will be responsible.
Ms Bongi ka Dube, GSDM spokesman, said the priority will be to appoint a service provider that would inject seed capital and run the business for a period of five years under the supervision of the GSDM.
“During the five-year-period the service provider will collect revenue, pay the monthly account for Eskom on behalf of the GMM, improve the state of the infrastructure by providing more reliable electricity supply to customers, improve the revenue collection and improve customer service.”
She said GSDM, as an implementing agent, will help negotiate repayments of the current Eskom account on behalf of the GMM moving forward, but the GMM will still be held responsible for its current debt.
