The KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) has noted with concern yet another legal claim against the eThekwini Municipality as a result of poorly maintained road infrastructure and called on all municipalities in the province to pre-empt similar cases by refocusing their efforts on speedy service delivery.
“As regrettable as these incidents are in view of the damaged their cause to affected citizens, they also have a negative impact on municipalities whose budgets are strained even further by litigation claims which could have been pre-empted by better maintenance of municipal infrastructure,” said KZN MEC for COGTA Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
KZN COGTA has consistently urged municipalities to improve their standards of maintenance of municipal infrastructure with the help of technology such as pothole hotlines or online applications to speed up their response time to repairs of reported potholes and other breakdowns in infrastructure.
“Our appeal is both to municipalities to rollout initiatives that facilitate a faster response to crises and to our citizens to make use of these initiatives and alert municipalities to potholes so they can be fixed as fast as possible to minimise the risk of accidents that can cause injuries to members of the public and incur unforeseen expenditure to municipalities,” said Dube-Ncube.
KZN COGTA is aware of the spending pressures all municipalities find themselves under as a result of delivering new infrastructure and maintaining the old. Municipal budgets are often insufficient to address both of these responsibilities simultaneously because of the magnitude of infrastructure backlogs.
“It is imperative that municipalities streamline their service delivery initiatives to ensure that at all times they offer value for money to the taxpayer and the ratepayer and their delivery of municipal infrastructure is an obvious area for improvement,” said Dube-Ncube.
For more information contact:
Lennox Mabaso
Cell: 082 884 2403
