Pretoria - The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) has vowed to march to the City of Tshwane on Friday to demand the end to the uncertainty about the tenure of the the outgoing Mayor Stevens Mokgalapa.
The outgoing mayor announced his resignation earlier this week, which is set to be concluded before the end of February at a council sitting.
Samwu regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane said they will be delivering a memorandum of demands to the City of Tshwane management at Tshwane House. Tladinyane said the ongoing battles between the EFF, ANC and DA over the removal of Mokgalapa and his members of mayoral committees through a vote of no confidence which had been ongoing since October last year was their main concern.
“The march is informed among other things the collapse of governance and legislature in the City of Tshwane and municipal departments,” Tladinyane said.
He also said that they will deal with the lack of bullets for the metro police in the past 12 months and the alleged suspension of municipal officials for more than 12 months.
Tladinyane also claimed that municipal buildings under the care and custody of the City of Tshwane were in a bad state.
However, the DA has denied claims that it was failing on delivering services to the people of Tshwane today.
Gauteng DA leader John Moodey said the party commended the City of Tshwane’s service delivery efforts of ensuring that all 284 projects in the 2019/20 Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and multi-year projects are implemented.
“Of those projects in progress to date, the installation of the water and sewer reticulation and construction of bulk water and sewage facilities in Hammanskraal Extension 10 giving residents access to basic services and the construction of the new Klipgat Hospital Reservoir will be completed in August this year and will provide adequate water supply capacity to 4700 households in Klipgat and surrounding areas.
“Furthermore, a transactional adviser has been appointed for a 24-month period to build in-house capacity at the Wonderboom Airport.” Moodey said.
He said his party is confident that the city is spending residents’ money appropriately.
“False allegations by the ANC about the city being in turmoil are misrepresenting the true state of the city. As the 2021 local government elections draw nearer, the ANC is becoming increasingly desperate to paint a bleak picture of Tshwane, as a city in disorder.
“While the DA is hard at work to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of services to the residents of Tshwane, it is apparent that the ANC will stop at nothing to cause continual disruption to block all efforts in this regard,” Moodey said.
He said the DA was aware of the ANC’s tactics and is determined to prevent it from allowing its antics to threaten service delivery to the residents of Tshwane.