The lives of community members, especially children, in the Buffalo City Metro are being placed at risk due to the Municipality’s inability to deliver electricity to its residents.
Today, 26 March 2019, I was joined by Makashule Gana, DA Team One South Africa Spokesperson for Basic Services, in doing service delivery oversight inspections at housing projects in Velwano and Manyano Locations in Mdantsane, East London. (see pictures attached here, here, here, here and here).
In Manyano Location children have lost their lives due to dangerous conditions created by illegal electricity connections.
We found a street where the impact of illegal electricity connections were clear to see.
People living on one side of the street have the luxury of streetlights and electricity to their houses, whilst people on the other side of the street have legal connections, but no electricity is being fed to their houses. The streetlights are also not operational. These people therefore resort to making use of illegal connections.
The DA in Buffalo City will take this issue up with the failing ANC-governed BCM Municipality and put pressure on it to save the lives of our children and remedy the situation.
In Velwano Location we found numerous incomplete houses that were handed over to beneficiaries by the failing ANC government. People have moved into these houses, even though they have no water, sanitation or electricity available. Many of the roofs are incomplete and the houses have no guttering.
The state of disrepair of these houses is a threat to the health and safety of residents and the DA will escalate their plight to the National Assembly to request urgent intervention.
Only a DA government can fight corruption, speed up basic service delivery and build One South Africa for All.