Johannesburg – Enoch Mgijima municipality residents took to the streets of Komani on Friday after rampant power outages have besieged the town recently.
The residents gathered in their numbers to fiercely protest against the rampant blackouts they have been facing in the Eastern Cape town. The shutdown began on Thursday and continued Friday.
The outages are said to be a result of the rolling blackouts, illegal connections and decaying infrastructure. However, electricity is only one of many service delivery grievances of the residents.
The Enoch Mgijima Municipality community services and public safety director, Aphiwe Mkhangelwa, spoke to Newzroom Afrika and said residents also had complaints regarding potholes, the cleaning of the town and trimming of the trees.
Mkhangelwa also confirmed that the complaints of the community members were valid as the municipality had failed to attend to certain tasks which are a part of service delivery due to a lack of resources.
“The complaints are legitimate, because we have had a problem with electricity and of illegal dumping, cleaning of the town and so on.
“Those demands have already been attended and it is ongoing, because we have the responsibility to ensure that we do attend to that on a day to day basis as a municipality.” he added.
An update of service delivery matters was also provided, with some of the issues already being attended to by the municipality.
Mkhangelwa said: “The trucks are on site and have started cleaning all the illegal dumpings. They have been cleaning since December and continued into January.
“I am certain now, as the report states, we are left with about 20% of the illegal dumping and regarding the trimming of trees, that is currently under way.
“The patching of potholes is also under way and this started early January. Resources needed were made available, so they are indeed patching the potholes.”
The municipality also revealed that their biggest issue with electricity began during the December/January period when many people returned home for the festive season which resulted in a system overload since the infrastructure was old.
The municipality also blamed National Treasury for their failure to attend to the electricity faults in the town as their grant wasn’t paid on time.
“The municipality couldn’t attend to those faults properly, because National Treasury had withheld the grant to the municipality. We have to take National Treasury to court to get them to make (our) funds available in January. We have been able to start attending to the electricity faults.
”As we speak now, the power stations that were not working are now working. We know that the expectation was that those faults (would) be attended to by December. We weren’t in that position because of the funds that were withheld.“
Mkhangelwa also addressed the motorcade which drove around the town with a megaphone allegedly intimidating the residents against protesting.
“The motorcade was not the mayor of the municipality, but rather members of the ANC in the region.
“The municipality hasn’t launched a counter protest and has never confronted the community members. The municipality has a responsibility to attend to the community and their grievances.“ said Mkhangelwa.
Tensions continue in the town as the residents continue to protest. The municipality is yet to receive a memorandum and meet with the shutdown organisers.
“We have been trying to meet with the leadership of the protests just to find out what could be the actual demand but we have not had success with that as yet.” said Mkhangelwa.
Social media users also shared videos from the Shutdown.
Shut down In Queenstown pic.twitter.com/0mvMfkY09E
— Sosh (@Sosh_litshawe) January 26, 2023
A #ShutDown in Komani (Queenstown) some communities say they've been without electricity for days. The protest is expected to continue on Friday. #EskomCrisis pic.twitter.com/dmWeIEohb4
Queenstown has had enough of corruption and arrogance of @MYANC @CyrilRamaphosa. Queenstown shutdown until the Mayor comes to his senses and stop bullying residents. We can't go for 10 days with no electricity. @EFFSouthAfrica @Julius_S_Malema next year we voting right 💚❤🖤 https://t.co/7Zi1t4eH7P pic.twitter.com/4qH5Xlc1Sr
— MisTokyo (@MissN50130106) January 27, 2023
IOL