A Limpopo municipality’s executive mayor has terminated a service provider contract hired to deliver a sanitation project, providing flushing toilets to Monsterlus residents in the Elias Motsoaledi local municipality because of poor workmanship.
Now, residents of Monsterlus in the Elias Motsoaledi local municipality in the Sekhukhune region have to use the bushes in order to relieve themselves.
The project was budgeted to the tune of R2 million and after the termination, empty toilet pits, building materials and incomplete toilet slabs were left lying in the backyards of about 30 families.
Now, residents in the area are gripped by fear after a three-year-old child recently fell into one of the empty pit latrines, which was filled with water.
The pits got full of water after torrential rain in Limpopo last December and in January.
“The residents have been waiting for the contractor to complete the toilets, but to no avail. When we asked the local councillor about this, he said the contractor had vanished into thin air.
That is why we are panicking,” resident Sipho Mmaboko said.
Mmaboko Hlabish, who is also a councillor for the Elias Motsoaledi municipality in Groblersdal, said most of the abandoned toilets were in ward 20 in the Monsterlus area.
He said the project came to an abrupt halt in May. “We are afraid ‘[because] the festive season is around the corner.
This is the time we expect a lot of visitors during Christmas and new year. If these toilets remain unfinished, we will be forced to go to the bushes, together with our visitors, and this is not good.”
Mmaboko claimed he had asked for an-swers from the local municipality and the district in vain. A woman, who only introduced herself as Mmathari, pleaded to the district mu-nicipality to complete the project before a life is lost.
“We have kids and when schools close in December, they will play in the backyard. We are scared they may fall into these holes.”
Executive mayor for the Sekhukhune district municipality Julia Mathebe confirmed the contractor was fired because of poor workmanship.
“Our people deserve better and I could not relax when the service provider want-ed to give our people a substandard end product,” said Mathebe.
The executive mayor, who is also ANC regional chair in the Sekhukhune region and the South African Local Government Association Limpopo deputy chair, said the municipality planned to appoint another contractor to complete the project.
She said the appointment would take place before the end of this financial year.
“I know the hardship our people in Monsterlus are confronted with on daily basis. But I had to chose between quality and mediocrity. I chose quality because I have the best interests of all my people at heart,” she said.
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