The effects of the electricity contractor strike has kept communities on the edge. This comes after the electricity contractors employed by eThekwini Municipality threatened that there will be war on the streets of Durban as a result of the municipality failing to renew their contract, a matter they expected to be addressed in December last year.
From 4 January, the contractors held protests outside the Durban City Hall where they handed over a memorandum to eThekwini, demanding that a response is given the next day. Unfortunately for them, there was no-one to receive the memorandum. The protest continued grabbing the attention of opposition party, Democratic Alliance, whose leadership has demanded an urgent Executive Committee meeting for the City to resolve the matter before the City is left in the dark. It is alleged that the municipality did not renew the contracts as it was seeking to appoint new contractors, a plan which was later halted after it received numerous complaints from the protesting contractors. The contractors threatened that if their contracts are not renewed, they will give the newly-appointed contractors a hard time. In a statement issued by DA Caucus Leader, Nicole Graham, on 10 January, Graham said: “The Democratic Alliance in eThekwini has written to Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda to urgently request that the Executive Committee convenes as soon as possible. The City is currently facing huge challenges with sanitation and electricity. Both are incredibly urgent and have a real impact on the municipality’s residents, economy and environment.
“The municipality’s failure to ensure that electricity support contracts were in place means that electricity repair capacity has been slashed since 1 January. This has seen a number of major protests and several memorandums being issued to the powers that be.” She said the turnaround time to repair electricity outages has increased drastically and several staff members claim that they cannot work due to threats. “This situation has been going on for a week now and no real solution has been tabled or made public. This should concern members of the Executive Committee greatly. It necessitates an urgent and thorough investigation and planning for the way forward,” said Graham.
Support contracts that were awarded last year were appealed and the current contracts then lapsed. The matter was not resolved by the end of December, leaving the City without any support contracts as of January. In a statement released by eThekwini municipality, Acting City Manager, Sandile Mnguni, said that the City’s management was currently looking at the options to resolve this problem. EThekwini was again contacted for an update on the status of the protest, however, no response was received at the time of going to press. Meanwhile, Graham said the municipality also has a challenge with weed spraying contractors and will probably only get them sorted by end of February. “The grass cutting contracts have just been finalised but there were some difficulties with contractors withdrawing due to intimidation. This is why our precious Durban looks like a jungle in many places,” said Graham. She said she has received numerous complaints everyday about the state of grass and weeds. “Parks currently only has ’emergency capacity’ which basically means normal work is not taking place. This is obviously an absolute bugger up and I have posted it on the eThekwini Executive Committee group to try and get things moving. I have also asked the City Manager to intervene,” Graham added.
