EThekwini Municipality ward 99 councillor Jane Naidoo. Picture: Supplied.
Durban — Residents of Umkomaas, south of Durban, claim they are facing a plethora of challenges over the lack of essential services following their ward's demarcation from Umdoni Local Municipality to the eThekwini Municipality.
Part of Umkomaas falls under eThekwini ward 99. The areas include Magabheni township and Craigieburn. Residents’ concerns were over the purchase of pre-paid electricity. Umdoni Local Municipality dealt directly with Eskom while the eThekwini Municipality has its own electricity purchasing methods.
One of the residents, Melody Chinnaa said they did not understand why the authorities moved their ward to eThekwini Municipality but left critical services to another entity, saying it did not make sense that ward 99 residents are voting in eThekwini but when they have electricity outages they will have to deal with Eskom which take days to fix the problem.
“I think placing our area within eThekwini Municipality was for us to access services from the municipality, however, for some reason, we are still getting electricity from Eskom. As resident,s we are calling on the authorities to transfer all services to one entity.
“When people vote they do so for services so it can’t be that we vote in eThekwini but we are not benefiting from the services provided by the entity we voted for,” said Chinnaa.
Democratic Alliance Proportional Representation (PR) councillor for the area, Thabani Ndlovu said he has held several meetings with residents to listen to their challenges.
Ndlovu said the solution would be to transfer all services to where people are voting so that they can hold the leadership accountable.
Ndlovu claims it took a longer period of time for Eskom to respond to the outages while the eThekwini responds within 24 hours.
eThekwini Ward 99 councillor Jane Naidoo agreed with residents that there were challenges which came with moving from Umdoni to eThekwini. However, Naidoo disagreed with the residents and the DA councillor regarding the belief that transferring all services to eThekwini would solve the challenges.
Naidoo said eThekwini has its fair share of challenges, so she did not think that it would be able to improve services.
Rather, Naidoo supports the idea of decentralisation of critical services. Naidoo said that ward 99 needed depots for electricity, water and sanitation and other services for easy accessibility and faster response to problems.
“If you move electricity to eThekwini without building a depot in Umkomaas there would be no difference. People should know that if electricity services are moved to eThekwini we will compete with 110 other wards. The problem is that all eThekwini services are centralised in the city. For me the solution lies in decentralization of services especially for outlying areas like ward 99,” said Naidoo.
Naidoo added that there are discussions between eThekwini Municipality and Eskom.
However, she said she did not think that moving electricity services to eThekwini would happen soon because Eskom has strict policy requirements.
Naidoo won the ward in a by-election after the death of the ANC councillor, Mnqobi Molefe in 2022.
WhatsApp your views on this story to 071 485 7995.
Daily News