Residents of Ext 18, known as Welamlambo, in eMbalenhle are furious about their roads that are unusable because of sewage spills.
These residents said the situation is getting worse every day because the Govan Mbeki Municipality employees continue to look at the problem, but fail to do anything.
Residents claimed to have reported their roads problem since May, but the municipality do nothing.
“It is difficult for an ambulance or mortuary vehicle to reach the houses where there are emergencies.
“This situation makes our lives difficult because we cannot access our yards in our vehicles,” said a resident.
“What is the role of these officials who were employed for unblocking sewers?
“We heard that the mayor had last month unveiled honey sucker trucks bought to fight sewage spills.
“Where are those trucks now? We were told that all of them were taken to Bethal,” said another resident.
They now want the new municipal manager to intervene by taking action against the lazy municipal officials who fail to deliver services to the community and prefer to “sit in their comfortable offices and enjoy air conditioning of fresh and warm air.
Donald Green, the acting manager of communication for the municipality, said the scourge of sewage spills in some parts of eMbalenhle can be attributed to the continual acts of vandalism and the dumping of foreign objects into manholes.
The wastewater treatment works had been subjected to vandalism and theft which had rendered the plant totally dysfunctional.
Green said the prevalence of theft and vandalism of infrastructure is disturbing as it has a direct and significant impact on the performance of the infrastructure, and service is negatively affected.
“The criminal acts had an adverse effect on revenue collection levels and significantly increased the municipality’s operation and maintenance costs as the continued acts of vandalism taking place in the area, where foreign objects such as huge stones, dead dogs and all forms of garbage are thrown into manholes prompt huge spillages in the area.
“Our team is hard at work trying to address sewage spills,” said Green.
“We call upon all residents to work with the municipality in protecting the infrastructure that is beneficial to them by reporting those implicated and we need to stop the blame game and all play our part in minimising the sewage spills that end up causing health hazards.
“Residents are quick to blame the municipality when there are spillages.
Let us be responsible citizens and assist the municipality in providing the services through the limited resources we have,” said Green.
ALSO READ: Armed cable thieves target eMbalenhle’s wastewater treatment works
