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The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Naledi will write to the MEC for Cooperative Governance, Gordon Kegakilwe, asking him to intervene in the municipality’s failure to restore electricity supply to several areas and to fix streetlights.

The ANC-led Naledi Local Municipality is unable to attend to the basic and yet critical part of service delivery which directly impacts on the safety of residents which is to fix the electricity problems that currently engulf the whole municipality.

For the past ten years the smallholdings and households on the Delarey and Schweizer road have been subjected to severe electricity cuts, residents have to endure long consecutive hours without electricity due to poor maintenance of the electrical infrastructure.

This negatively affects businesses who suffer in losses not only in productivity but incur damage to their equipment as a result of the unstable electricity supply. In August 2019, three transformers were burnt down, only two of them have been fixed.

The transformer will cost the municipality R400 000 to fix, money which the municipality does not have. This leaves households to each use up to 40 Amperes (amps), this is too low and causes residents’ electricity to trip and go off for more than 20 minutes if they plug in more than one electronic device. For the past three years, almost all the streets lights within the town have not been working due to a burnt-out cable, the DA has on numerous occasions asked the municipality to replace it but nothing is being done to fix the problem.

The municipality does not have the necessary equipment and vehicles such as cherry picker trucks to attend to necessary electrical faults. The lack of street lights has allowed criminals to take advantage, there has been an increase in crime, particularly, house burglaries and robberies.

The automatic timer switch is also broken and has not been replaced, which causes many streets in Vryburg to either permanently be in the dark as the street lights have to be manually turned on and off from each light pole.

Due to ANC mismanagement, Naledi Local Municipality is in a deep financial crisis and is failing to maintain electrical infrastructure and deliver basic services to its residents.

It is no longer enough to place municipalities under administration as this does not yield any results. Naledi needs a change of government, a government that will implement a turn-around strategy to fix the municipality’s finances and restore service delivery.

Issued by DA