Mayor addresses e-tolls at Lenasia Ntirhisano

29 June 2016

 

The City of Johannesburg would continue raising concerns surrounding e-tolls with the national government, Johannesburg Executive Mayor Cllr Parks Tau said during a tour of Lenasia, in Region G, on Tuesday June 28 as part of the Ntirhisano Mmogo Community Outreach Programme.

 

The campaign is a platform used by both the City and the Gauteng Provincial Government to engage residents on service delivery and developmental issues. Responding to a question raised by a resident during a meeting with community members and businesspeople at the Lenasia Cricket Grounds, Mayor Tau said the City was “very much aware” that the people of Gauteng were against e-tolls and had called for them to be scrapped.

During his main address, Mayor Tau said one of the City’s critical tasks was to overcome the legacy of segregation and racial discrimination and that its leadership had no choice but to build a non-racial and united City.

“It is our duty to build a society that is free of discrimination and racial domination for the future of our children. People say the rainbow nation of Madiba era has disappeared into thin air ... But we need to do our best to overcome racial discrimination and segregation for our country to be a prosperous one.

“We also need to find ways to ensure that people are aware of what the City is doing in terms of service delivery. We need to ensure that those services are filtered through on the ground,” he said.

Mayor Tau was accompanied by most Members of the Mayoral Committee, namely Cllrs Sello Lemao (Public Safety), Nonceba Molwele (Health and Social Development), Roslyn Greeff (Development Planning), Mally Mokoena (Corporate and Shared Services), Matshidiso Mfikoe (Environment and Infrastructure Services), Ruby Mathang (Economic Development) and Chris Vondo (Community Development).

Addressing concerns raised by the community, Mayor Tau said the City had committed itself to maintaining all public facilities. He also promised to attend to all the letters and petitions sent to him. Responding to a resident who had said the demarcation process was “flawed and unacceptable” as it denied the community to be served by councillors from their own wards, Mayor Tau said the issue needed to be revisited to avoid disruptions in the wards and confusion among people and political parties.

Dr Hermant Vallabh of Ennerdale Clinic said metro police had to be visible if crime were to be reduced.

He also said working conditions at clinics were appalling and the area was faced with a shortage of ambulances and fire engines. A local businessman said business was hampered by the high crime rate. Another resident blamed the City for power outages which, she said, lasted up to eight days, “making our lives unbearable and difficult”.