Minister Des van Rooyen held an Imbizo and handed over important infrastructure to communities at OR Tambo District Municipality
“Water is indeed life – we appreciate that we have been given life through the boreholes that are supplying us with water”, these were the sentiments expressed by the community in Bele Zingcuka during the visit by Minister of COGTA, honourable Des van Rooyen.
Overall, the department financed the drilling of nineteen (19) boreholes in the Eastern Cape Province, eight (8) of these are in OR Tambo district Municipality. Today (20 March 2017) Minister van Rooyen symbolically handed over these boreholes which have been operational since 2016. These boreholes e been providing water to communities in the respective areas and ensured that communities do not travel long distances to look for this precious source of life.
“We came here to OR Tambo District in this year of the centenary of late Oliver Reginald Tambo, the stalwart of our struggle”, said Minister. Minister visited OR Tambo Municipality bearing good news for communities who have been struggling with water. A number of municipalities in the province have the challenges of water shortages, hence the intervention of CoGTA through the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA) and Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG). “Indeed, ours is a caring government and CoGTA will continue to work in partnership with the leadership of Municipalities to improve the lives of communities”, added Minister.
The leadership of Mhlontlo Municipality, which is where some of the launched boreholes and other projects were situated, gave the Minister a briefing which included progress on areas identified for disaster relief since the storms which left about 300 households homeless, destroyed property and infrastructure in January.
The boreholes were needed and matters were made worse when South Africa was besieged by the worst drought in years. Then MISA as part of the drought relief body that monitors the effects of drought in the country and develops appropriate solutions to improve this situation undertook to develop a programme to provide boreholes or rehabilitate existing boreholes for communities.
The first stop by the Minister after he was briefed by Municipal leadership was a visit to the Tsolo Waterborne Sanitation project which is part of the CAPEX programme of the OR Tambo district. This project is assisting to reverse the current backlog in sanitation and it will cost about R148m. In his response to the progress achieved thus far, Minister welcomed this infrastructure as it will benefit communities. Even though there is progress, a lot of work still has to be done to bring this project to a point where it is ready to service targeted communities. Of importance is that this project is already benefiting communities as both the skilled and unskilled labour workers in this massive project are from community.
The other projects visited by the Minister were the two boreholes in Mhlontlo Municipality providing water to thousands of people. The main activity was held at a borehole project in the village of Bele Zingcuka. The Minister handed over the boreholes and even addressed many community members who came to receive this important infrastructure. Minister van Rooyen indicated that the entire government is hard at work to ensure service delivery in line with the plans we set ourselves.
“We are currently dealing with the mess of apartheid and will need billions of Rands to reverse the backlog of services required by communities”, added the Minister. The Minister lamented the importance of ensuring that communities are kept abreast with information on the programmes implemented by government. People have the right to know, hence government should communicate its work and plans. He urged government to invest on informing communities as this is the only way we can get their buy-in for plans meant for their development. As government, the development of our people is at the centre of our work.
The Minister committed that his department (CoGTA) will continue to work with communities through Municipalities providing them with resources and strategic advise on key issues where possible. Both communities and the leadership of the Municipality expressed appreciation for the work done by government in their areas.
The Minister indicated that launch and hand over of various infrastructure projects to the communities is important for development as this will set us on course to achieving the targets we set ourselves. To this effect, Minister requested communities protect the infrastructure in their areas against vandalism or being stole. Of importance is that this infrastructure remains an integral part of communities.
Minister emphasised the issue of funding which is more important to ensuring that our projects are implemented. He however advocated for prudence and efficiency when using the government funds. “In as much as we need to finance our projects, we need to ensure that we don’t build white elephants that don’t benefit the intended beneficiaries. Projects must be completed on time within specification agreed upon so that government does not end up overspending unnecessarily”, said the Minister. He indicated that government will continue exploring ways to ensure that the key infrastructure projects that benefit communities are financed.
Communities expressed hope and were happy that there is progress in delivering on some of the key projects planned for their areas.
Enquiries:
Legadima Leso
CoGTA Communications
Cell: 083 378 9495
