MMCs pledge increased service delivery at Bua le Sechaba
17 November 2015
Using his handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow, a clearly and visibly perplexed Johannesburg Member of the Mayoral Committee for Economic Development Councillor Ruby Mathang said he could not be proud of being an MMC when there were so many thousands of residents still living under the kind of grinding poverty he had just witnessed.
Councillor Mathang was one of the City’s MMCs who on Monday November 16 visited several informal settlements in Region G as part of the Bua Le Sechaba (Talk to the Nation) campaign to assess the extent of service delivery in the areas.
Bua Le Sechaba, spearheaded by Chair of Chairs Councillor Solly Mogase, is a City initiative through which MMCs conduct an oversight on municipal projects and engage with communities on service delivery issues.
The Mayoral Committee has already visited several informal settlements in regions A and C since the campaign’s launch a few months ago.
The other MMCs on Monday’s tour of informal settlements in Region G – which has the highest poverty index in the city – were Councillor Roslynn Greeff, MMC of Development Planning, Councillor Sello Lemao, MMC of Public Safety and Councillor Mally Mokoena, MMC of Group Corporate and Shared Corporate Services.
The informal settlements the MMCs visited included Lawley Station, Dark City, Precast, Thembelihle, Slovo Park, Hopefield, Orange Farm Driezik 3 and 5, Eikenhof and Kapok. MMC Mathang could not hide his distress after witnessing the conditions under which many people lived in the informal settlements visited. Even his voice cracked when he tried to describe the squalor and filth he had seen.
“We undertook this initiative so as to make a difference. There is a moral obligation on all of us to make a difference,” MMC Mathang said.
“The areas we visited today are the most depressed in the city, with some of the people eating [discarded foodstuffs] from rubbish dumps. We need to rededicate our commitment to make a difference in the lives of our people,” he said.
Region G Director Mickey Padiachee said the far-flung region – which is not covered by the Rea Vaya bus rapid transit (BRT) system and does not have a Corridor of Freedom in its area of jurisdiction – needed a radical economic plan.
“Clearly, for this region we need to produce a service-delivery model of excellence,” Padiachee said.
Ward 8 Councillor Janice Ndarala said her constituency was afflicted by high unemployment, especially among the youth and women. She said the area had also not benefited from the R3-billion Jozi@Work programme, the City’s unique job-creation and empowerment programme.
In response, Councillor Mogase said it was scandalous that a mayoral programme aimed at reducing unemployment levels had not been rolled out to some parts of the region. He said informal settlements were a priority and that the communities’ frustrations and grievances should be speedily attended to.
“We don’t want to come here next year, when we conduct our house-to-house election campaign, only to be told that we had failed to address the needs of the people,” Cllr Mogase said.
Ward 118 Councillor Mbuyiselo Dokolwane pleaded with the MMCs to speed up the electrification of informal settlements in his constituency. Other major problems residents in the area identified were the dislodgement of toilets and lack of facilities for the youth