Since the beginning of this year, the Executive Mayor of Rustenburg, Councillor Mpho Khunou has been crisscrossing the Rustenburg with his unannounced visits to numerous areas where service delivery has had unrelenting bottlenecks, to the detriment of the community.
Previously, the Mayor accompanied by the Municipal Manager Mr. Victor Sello Makona, the Council’s Speaker and Single Whip – Councillors Shiela Mabale-Huma, Levy Mokwele and various members of the Mayoral Committee, have been to the City Centre, Tlhabane, Zinniaville, Karlien Park, Protea Park, Modikwe, Makolokwe and Bethanie among other areas.
Mayor Khunou had made a commitment to go to the grassroots to be able to gain better insight into the challenges faced by communities and to make follow-up visits to ensure that where challenges persisted, the responsible Directorates would take appropriate remedial actions.
The City’s first resident led an oversight visit to numerous projects which were funded in accelerating service delivery, in line with the Council adopted integrated development plan and said, the only way to ensure service delivery was a reality is to take stock of the situation on the ground “we cannot always rely on reports by senior managers and officials, as such to ensure that residents receive the service which they pay for, we need to physical verification and satisfy ourselves, lest we be found to have been irresponsible with the tax-payers money” Mayor Khunou said.
The visits, commenced at the Municipal Main Stores, which is a facility used by the RLM to procure all the critical infrastructure and components for the electrical, water and sanitation units, which are more often faced with increased number of reported complaints on a daily basis.
The visit to the stores, was to ascertain stock levels, for the three units, as previously shortage of supplied material stocks had resulted in prolonged inconveniences on the side of the residents, while the turnaround time for responding and resolving reported complaints was compromised, thus causing backlogs.
The entourage proceeded to Tlhabane which in recent months has been experiencing water supply challenges, following an earlier bulk water reticulation project which left under a thousand household disconnected from the older water supply network. Most of the households which were not able to access water have been put back onto the network as the appointed service providers continue to finish off the project.
In Tlhabane West, the City’s pump station located in the suburb was inspected, where has commenced on increasing the pumping capacity to ensure that residents in highlying areas have access to water, during period of unplanned and planned water supply interruptions. Currently when the reservoirs have low water levels, residents in the areas are unable to access water due to poor pressure in the system, which requires water cuts for increasing capacity and subsequent water flow to the area.
During this leg of the visit various Members of the Mayoral Committee were in attendance, such as MMC for Roads and Transport – Councillor Lucky Kgaladi, MMC for Technical and Infrastructure Services – Councillor Michael Mhlungu, MMC for Corporate Support Services – Councillor Joyce Mashishi-Ntsime and MMC for Budget and Treasury Office – Councillor Basebi Lekoro.
End.