Buffalo City’s newly elected Mayor Princess Faku has vowed to address the Eastern Cape municipality’s billing system, which she says continues to inspire a lack of confidence in customers.

Faku was elected on Thursday following a Special Council Meeting that was called by the municipality’s speaker, who presided over the replacement of Xola Phakathi as mayor following Phakathi's recall after reportedly being absent from work and neglecting his mayoral duties.

“The system needs to be credible and reliable and that is the first task to tackle as I set my foot in office. Furthermore, the issue of vandalism also takes precedence along with illegal connections of both water and electricity, as well as the stealing of electric cables,” she said.

Faku further called on the application of service standard norms, including the fixing of potholes, and the collection of waste.

“The incoming political leaders must firmly focus on the beautification of our metro and this should be non-negotiable by the Eastern Cape government. We will have to adopt the service standard norms to tackle these problems. The issue of broken lights needs to be attended to as if neglected for longer, they might influence crimes in our area. We will also be rushing to fixing water challenges to ensure turnaround time,” she promised.

Opposition parties are not fully confident in Faku’s abilities and have committed to hold the new mayor accountable.

“This new mayor has got a questionable character, however, she mentioned the issue of the billing system that kills our people in the metro. We are going to follow up and make sure that the billing system is fixed,” said the Economic Freedom Fighters’ Mziyanda Hlekiso.

The Democratic Alliance’s nominee for mayor Sue Bentley agreed and said her party would hold Faku to account for the things that she promised, such as the renewal of bulk infrastructure, removing electricity illegal connections, ensuring service delivery to the residents and fixing roads.