Residents from Ezinambeni hands over memorandum full of concerns

A group of residents living in Ezinambeni are tried of the endless problems in the area, so they wrote up a memorandum and handed it over to the Emalahleni City Council and gave them 24 hours to respond to their complaints.

The memorandum was handed over on Wednesday, August 26 and they received a reply from the Emalahleni City Council on Friday, September 4.

The first complaint was about load reduction and that the damaged transformer at the main substation at phase 4 that needs to be replaced.

The community is fed up of load reduction and the loadshedding schedule (with your long extra added hours) we as the community demand that it be suspended with immediate effect.

Response:

The municipality has embarked upon its supply chain processes which is a legislative matter in procuring the transformer and it is  envisaged that the replacement of the transformer unit should be completed by the second week of September.

lt should be noted that the type of equipment that was damaged at Kwa-Guqa substation is not a shelf item but a six to eight months manufacturing period and come at very high costs.

Load reduction is a process which is embarked upon to safeguard livelihood and equipment where the equipment is protected against any damage or faults due to high or unauthorized usage including overloading.

Unfortunately the substation at Kwa-Guqa has exceeded its allowable quota (NMD) of energy supply from Eskom due to the exponential growth of the area around Ezinambeni and also due to the high prevalence of illegal connections around the area thereby putting undue stress on the grid supplying the area.

The municipality has requested Eskom to increase the capacity at the substation however this cannot be achieved as the municipality owes Eskom in excess of R3 billion and thus Eskom is reluctant to increase the supply.

All the substations within the area are constantly broken into and equipment vandalized or stolen.  

The community is tried of water interruptions and they are sick and tired of JoJo tanks and they are demanding a reliable source of water.

The municipality is currently aware of the challenges related to the provision of water to communities as there is a number of factors affecting the supply of water to areas around Emalahleni such as the imbalanced in terms of supply versa vie demand as currently the demand from communities far outstrip the supply that the system can provide.

The servicing of JoJo tanks will be prioritized as a matter of urgency and given the necessary attention.

The municipality has already plans in place to increase water supply through implementation of modular packages plants fro three water schemes within Emalahleni and one of which will be at point E reservoir in Kwa-Guqa.

The roads in Ezinambeni are damaged especially around zone 14 Extension 2 and 3 as the community wants the roads fixed urgently as the rainy season is on it’s way.

The municipality is currently patching Shadrack Mayelani and Machibini roads as part of surfaced road maintenance.

Hence the maintenance program for surfaced roads and gravel roads is on-going. Unfortunately the roads in Emalahleni including zone 14 require rehabilitation and major repairs which needs huge capital funding which unfortunately the municipality doesn’t have as a result of communities not paying for services rendered and therefore has to make do with limited funds and being heavily reliant on donations.

Another issue is the waste collection list not followed according to the schedule and at times not collected for weeks and waste is not collected at ward 29.

There is a continues challenge with the available number of refuse trucks for waste collection and a lack of back-up fleet to replace trucks that are being maintained.

This has resulted in the area not being collected frequently.

The municipality is currently looking at avenues to bring in a new fleet t enable frequent waste collection.

Four new refuse trucks have been purchased (one is a donation) and will be delivered within the next two months.

This will assist in adding to the existing fleet to allow for more frequent waste collection.