Pretoria - The Tshwane coalition government led by mayor Randall Williams has dismissed the narrative peddled by the ANC that the municipality was prioritising service delivery for suburban residents over those living in the townships.
This happened during a media briefing at Tshwane House where they gave a report-back regarding service delivery under their watch in the past 12 months.
Williams asserted that the multi-party coalition government has delivered on all its 10 strategic plans to fast-track service delivery.
This was despite Friday’s march by the ANC, which saw hundreds of supporters protesting against the poor state of services endured mainly by township residents.
During the march ANC regional chairperson Eugene “Bonzo” Modise constantly labelled the DA as racist, claiming it has not made any allocation of capital budget to the townships.
MMC for Community Safety Grandi Theunissen, also caucus leader of the Freedom Front Plus, said the demonstration by the ANC to bemoan service delivery was “politicking”.
He pointed out that the ANC was responsible for failures at Eskom and the Post Office.
“The state of the healthcare system in the country, the road system, the e-tolls. Those are all issues created by the ANC,” he said.
In Tshwane, he said, the ANC was in charge for 21 years and “they have brought us to where we are at the moment”.
“That’s why they led this protest the other day. They are diverting attention from their own failures,” he said.
Finance MMC Peter Sutton said the narrative by the opposition parties that some areas get service delivery while others don’t "is a fatal lie”'
He explained that when a budget is prepared it is done so not “according to areas where people pay regularly and others don’t”.
Williams said the coalition government believes that core basic services that include cutting grass, patching potholes, repairing water leaks, and fixing street lights was important.
“During our 12 months in office, we have cut over 183 million square metres of grass and we have repaired over 75 000 potholes. We’ve also repaired about 60 000 street lights,” he said.
He said the city has repaired about 46 000 water leaks and over 23 000 sewers have been unblocked.
Bronkhorstspruit substation was refurbished and upgraded from 20MVA to 80MVA substation at a cost of R96 million.
“The Kosmosdal A substation (was) upgraded from 20 MVA to 40 MVA at a cost of R65 million. Soshanguve substation (was) upgraded from a 20MVA to 80MVA at a cost of R92 million,” he said.
The city has also increased access to electricity with a total of 2 588 new electricity connections installed.
“For the current financial year, the City allocated R75 million for the replacement of worn-out water network pipelines. Through this budget we have an estimated target to replace 18 420m of pipe across a series of projects. Our Food Bank Programme was allocated R4.8 million for the 2022/23 financial year to provide relief to qualifying destitute families and non-governmental organisations,” he said.
Regarding the indigent programme, he said the city is currently supporting over 4 000 households through this programme.
This was in spite of the criticism by the ANC that poor residents eligible for free water and electricity have to wait for two years to be approved for an indigent programme.
Williams said: “The city is continuing with the indigent programme that’s designed to assist residents who are unable to pay for municipal services and serves as a vehicle to fight poverty."
Pretoria News