A Makana councillor is assuring municipal officials that they are not going to lose their jobs as a result of the recent mayoral change.
A Makana councillor is assuring municipal officials that they are not going to lose their jobs as a result of the recent mayoral change.
"There won’t be antagonism, please leave politics to politics," says Zamuxolo Peter who heads the council’s corporate services portfolio committee. While he added that officials who are doing a great job will keep their jobs, he sent a stern warning to those officials who are failing to deliver services to the community.
"We’re not going to hesitate to act against those who infiltrate the administration or our municipality with the intention of rendering our government uselesss," he warned during an exclusive interview with Grocott’s Mail last week.
Peter says the municipality’s corporate image leaves much to be desired because some residents complain about officials who do not adhere to Batho Pele (people first) principles. Yet he says the corporate services directorate has managed to put systems in place for the smooth running of the municipality’s administration. "The corporate services [directorate]is the heart of the institution and must therefore have all its vacancies filled," he adds.
He says that they recently had a strategic workshop where it was clarified that the corporate services directorate should provide support to the mayor’s office. "I’m happy with the support that section 57 employees [directors]are giving to the new mayor in order to bring him up to speed with the municipality’s programmes," he says.
He adds that the council has plans for committee meetings to proceed even if a quorum is not met. He says this is according to the advice of Makana Mayor Vumile Lwana as committees don’t make decisions but makes recommendations to the mayoral commitee.
He says owners who have more than one piece of land should approach the municipality or the land reform department instead of selling to "foreigners" who use the land for game farming. "Game farming is rife in my ward," added Peter who is also Ward 3 councillor.
Ward 3 is the largest ward in Makana and includes areas such as Riebeeck East (where Peter hails from), Carlisle Bridge, Alicedale and Sidbury. He attributes a lack of land to the fact that not a single house has been built in his ward since 1997.
Because most of the land in the ward is used for game farming, previous rural dwellers were evicted when the farms were converted to game farms. He calls for the provincial public works department to urgently tansfer the land it owns to the municipality to make way for sufficient housing developments.
