ANC loots electricity for its birthday celebrations – mayor of Kgatelopele must pay up
by Ismail Obaray – DA Constituency Head of Central Northern
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Date: 23 July 2018
Release: Immediate
The DA has written to Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) MEC, Bentley Vass, requesting that he directly intervenes to resolve the ANC-run Kareeberg municipality’s attempts to frustrate the appointment of ward committee members in DA wards 1 and 3.
Ward committees work with the ward councilor to identify and resolve issues affecting residents in that specific ward.
While the DA has received the nomination letters of potential ward committee members for both wards, two years after the process started, the list is still marred by irregularities which the ANC seems disinterested in resolving.
Despite numerous requests by the DA to ensure that the committees are established and become active, the municipality has been dragging its feet as it wants to manipulate processes to create largely ANC based ward committees.
This in itself is contrary to the notion of ward committees that should be broadly representative of the greater community.
The ANC’s political games are seriously inhibiting community participation in municipal governance, and ultimately hindering service delivery to the residents of Vosburg and Carnarvon.
The ANC clearly wants to muffle the voices of the community that give input into the decisions that local councils make, and it wants to create the false impression that the DA is not responsive to peoples’ needs.
The ward committee system plays a critical role in giving meaning to the notion of “the people shall govern” and it must be enabled and respected, in order to empower communities.
Only change under a DA-led government will ensure that ward committees, are properly established after local government elections, as soon as possible, to ensure that communities can hold local government accountable for service delivery failures.
Media Enquiries
Ismail Obaray
DA Constituency Head of Central Northern
082 380 2128
Shelley De Witt
Researcher
082 847 1387
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