MORE than 1 000 residences will soon receive electricity, after the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality upped its efforts to provide swift service delivery across the Bay, including informal settlements.
Nelson Mandela Bay acting mayor, Tshonono Buyeye, recently visited the Nomakanjani Informal settlement in the vicinity of Motherwell, to inspect work that the municipality had done to provide the community with water and electricity.
Buyeye announced that the NMBM would restart an electrification project in the informal settlement, which was halted six months ago due to a lack of funds. After the completion of the project, more than 1 000 homes in the area will be connected to the grid.
“The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality understands that for people to adhere to Covid-19 regulations, they need to receive efficient and reliable service delivery and this also applies to people staying in informal settlements,” Buyeye said.
A contractor has already been sent to the site to assess the work to be done.
The municipality also delivered 89 water tanks to informal settlements across the city.
“While people are still staying in shacks, we need to move swiftly with services so that we do not have our people queueing in their hundreds in front of a single water tap. In such conditions we might as well forget about social distancing and washing of hands,” Buyeye added.
Community leader, Vuyani Lloyd, said that the community was pleased and grateful that the municipality had not forgotten about them during these challenging times.
“People are dying in huge numbers in affluent countries like the USA, Italy and China. We require the means necessary to be able to fight this disease.
“Services like water and electricity will help us maintain the highest hygiene standards. At least now there are more points for drinking water with the addition of the tanks and our people will now always have water to wash their hands,” he said.
“I hope that the evident acceleration of service delivery will not slow down when the Covid-19 disaster period is over,” Lloyd added.
MMC for infrastructure and engineering, Andile Lungisa, said the leadership of the metro had the responsibility to ensure the safety of all residents.
“The lives of the people who stay in Summerstrand and those who stay here in the Nomakanjani Informal Settlement are equally important to us.
“In the suburban areas, residents may have the means and ways to mitigate the effects of this pandemic, but the people living in these poor areas depend on government. We cannot fail them at a time when they need us the most.”
