Gallery Update
MOSSELBAY NEWS - Frustration with a perceived lack of progress with a new housing development along Walvis Street led to members of the community gathering on Louis Fourie Road at De Bakke and setting tyres alight on Monday night.
The unhappiness spilled over to Tuesday morning, when again a tyre was set alight, stopping the stream of early morning traffic into town.
Mossel Bay deputy executive mayor Dirk Kotzé told the Mossel Bay Advertiser the latest protest action may necessitate the council reconsidering the importance of a clean audit report if it meant that it impeded the delivery of services to community members living in dire conditions.
"The community has legitimate concerns; there is no denying it. Learners having to study with no electricity available in their homes, no potable water in homes, people having to use communal ablutions - these are conditions that council has empathy with and everything should be done to attend to these urgently."
Mossel Bay municipal manager Adv Thys Giliomee met the angry protesters on Monday evening and they dispersed after an agreement was reached on a follow-up meeting with the community on Thursday evening, 7 February.
The protest action followed a meeting between the director of planning and integrated services, Carel Venter, and the housing beneficiary liaison committee earlier on Monday evening. The community representatives expressed their dissatisfaction with the planned layout of the new development and the fact that houses were not erected yet.
The community members also emphasised their list of grievances, many of which have been attended to since they were first discussed with the municipality about a year ago.
Audit prescripts
A previous contractor responsible for the installation of services infrastructure such as sewerage and stormwater pipes defaulted in 2017 and had to be removed from the contract.
Typical of government contracts, it required a lengthy administrative process to cancel the contract and the contractor finally vacated the site at the end of 2017. The municipality then, considering the urgency for the work to be finalised, asked for quotations and awarded Transand the contract to complete the services infrastructure.
Adv Giliomee said: "In September 2018 the municipality published a tender for the building of houses on the site.
"In October/November 2018 the Auditor-General picked up non-compliance with the instruction that all government tenders should include a requirement for local content, especially with regards the requisition of steel and steel products, effectively resulting in all steel products to be sourced from a South African supplier.
"As soon as the municipality was made aware of the non-compliance, by law all expenditure in contravention of this instruction had to be stopped.
"This instruction by the Auditor-General affected not only the tender for the houses at Walvis Street, but approximately ten contracts in total," the municipal manager explained. The contract for the Walvis Street homes totals approximately R46 million."
New tender
At the start of 2019 new specifications for the housing tender were designed and the tender is published in this edition of the newspaper. A site meeting will take place on 19 February and the tender will be awarded, probably by the end of March, depending on a possible appeals process. Adv Giliomee said it was agreed that a shortened tender process be followed.
"It is important to note that the municipality was not lackadaisical with the process. The need for housing is well defined. In fact, the town planning design for the area was done specifically to allow for as may homes as possible. This is the reason for the manner in which access roads were planned - to allow for sufficient houses to address the need for houses," Adv Giliomee stressed.
He said he was comfortable that all houses would be sufficiently serviced.
Let's communicate
The municipal manager agrees that the municipality could have communicated the developments regarding the contracting process with the community sooner.
Adv Giliomee said: "The municipality did a needs analysis in October and liaised with the ward councillor and community on how the shortcomings in the area could be addressed most effectively.
"However, on Monday, when the community leaders met the municipal executive, a number of complaints that the municipality was not aware of, were raised.
"I urge the community to inform the municipality of service delivery complaints such as a lack of lighting or refuse removal issues so that the problems may be taken care of."
The municipal spokesperson, Colin Puren, stressed that several of the list of 20 concerns previously raised were rectified since they were initially communicated to the municipality. "If we are not made aware of shortcomings, we cannot deal with them. Please communicate with the municipality and with the ward councillor."
Deputy mayor Kotzé expressed his concern that the excessive importance placed on legislation impeded service delivery at local level. "Tenders worth millions of rands are affected in an effort to save a couple of thousand rands. It is time to reflect on the need for a clean audit if it means that services cannot be made available timeously to communities within the greater Mossel Bay area."
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