Residents protested against poor service delivery in Breyten on 8 January.

According to information received, the community closed the road from Ermelo to Carolina which passes through Breyten.

Breyten Police were on the scene to monitor the situation.

A branch executive committee member of the ANC, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Msukaligwa Local Municipality (MLM) is failing to provide basic services, such as water, to the community.

Since before Christmas, the Breyten municipal unit has been dysfunctional and is always offline with no network and no refuse collection.”

The member added, the municipality is failing to fill all positions of employees who have died, therefore the Breyten unit is the most under staffed. 

“There is one general assistant who comes from Ermelo to assist the Breyten unit in the engineering department, this however, created a fight between the community and employees of the unit. 

“The community believes they should be benefiting from the vacancy.”

“Head office was wrong to send the individual instead of hiring capable community members from Breyten who can do the job.”

According to a community member, there is sewage oozing from manholes and multi-functional wastewater treatment facilities, dumping raw sewage into the Vaal River.

Some houses lack flushing systems because the water was not connected to the RDPs, especially at Extension 04, Enkanini.

“Residents are thus forced to use pit toilets.”

The community member added, Thabo Village which is also known as emaChinen is without running water at this stage.

Mr Freddy Kajeni, another community member, said: “I stay in the village and can confirm there is no water.”

Members of the ANC’s executive branch in Breyten have had various meetings with MLM mayoral committee, but nothing is being done.

According to one such member, an official from the municipality promised the community that they would send four water tanks each day until the water challenges are addressed, but this has allegedly not happened. 

“We as the ANC branch executives had to come in and try to address the community before the protest escalated and caused more damage. 

“The municipality failed to send anyone from their side to come and address the protesters.

“We are very grateful that there was no damage to property and we thank Breyten Police, who were visible and ensured Covid-19 regulations were adhered to.”

The Highvelder sent media enquiries to Mr Mandla Zwane, spokesman of Msukaligwa Municipality.

Read the complete article in this week’s Highvelder for his response.