BIG 5 Hlabisa Mayor, Comfort Khumalo, has urged residents to take ownership and protect all government properties and infrastructure.

Addressing the community last Friday during a sod turning ceremony of a road construction project, Khumalo said he was concerned that every time facilities to uplift communities are made available, these are vandalised.

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‘It costs us a lot of money to build and repair these facilities. We appeal to the community to refrain from vandalising the buildings.’

Khumalo also addressed the issue of non-payment of rates.

‘Residents, businesses and even government departments owe our municipality about
R54-million.

‘As a rural municipality we mainly operate and depend on national treasury grants, but if the community settle their outstanding accounts, we can fast-track service delivery.

‘Even if, for a start, people with outstanding payments settle only 50 per cent of their debt, it would already make a huge difference.

‘In the last financial year we only managed to collect about R34-million in rates, including the money we made selling some portions of land which belonged to the municipality,’ Khumalo said.

The mayor said they receive an annual amount of R225-million for service delivery and were determined to utilise this budget for community development only.

‘We want to provide services such as the electrification of houses, road construction and focus more on the needs of the community.’

Ward 10 Councillor, Bonginkosi Manqele, said the construction of the R6.5-million road from Ugazi Village to Vezi was long overdue.

‘We are grateful for the road upgrade.

Local motorists were complaining and public transport could not drive through during rainy days because the road was impassable. They would drop passengers far from their bus stops.’

Also attending the sod turning ceremony, IFP President Velenkosini Hlabisa said it was unfortunate that the municipality receives limited budgets from national treasury.

‘If they had a sufficient budget the municipality would have tarred the road and that would bring an everlasting solution to this community.’

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