By Tjaart van der Walt DA Mangaung Councillor
Date: 26 October 2021
Release: Immediate
The DA can reveal that the ANC-governed Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality has for some time now been without a building inspector on duty. As of Thursday, 21 October, days and possibly weeks have passed without any building inspector on duty to serve the entire Bloemfontein area.
After extensive investigations into the status of a number of confirmed illegal building sites in Universitas that were reported more than two weeks ago, the DA ascertained that no notice has yet been served on any of the offenders. We also established that there was no official on duty with the power to issue a building regulation contravention notice, because the two inspectors Mangaung has, were both sick.
This explains the numerous complaints the DA has received from residents about building plans that were paid and submitted more than 12 months ago and were still not approved. In one such instance, the applicant was informed by the Head of the Planning Department and managers that their building plans could not be located, which resulted in them having to resubmit their plans. When the applicant followed up, they were again informed that resubmitted plan could not be found.
The failure by the Metro to approve compliant building plans within the required 3 month period as well as lack of enforcement on serious cases reported has a direct effect on economic development. Added to this, non-compliant plans and buildings are severely dangerous and could place the lives of occupants and residents at risk.
The Metro’s Financial Recovery Plan identified a number of critical posts that needed to be filled. One of these is the position of General Manager for Planning, which an official has been in an acting post for more than 7 years. This is while the planning and engineering divisions of the municipality continue to be the worst resourced departments, in terms of the number of vacancies in the departments. The DA has reliably learned of tenders to appoint consultants to do planning and engineering work that should be done by employees in the vacant positions in these departments. If these consultants are indeed paid millions, like in the past, the action will be wasteful expenditure. These monies should rather pay for the permanent appointment of skilled and qualified employees that can do planning and engineering work internally.
Where the DA governs, we streamline bureaucratic processes and appoint capable staff in critical vacant positions to eradicate bottlenecks in order to enable a business friendly environment that will attract job creating investments in the city.
On 1 November residents have the chance to once and for all remove the disgraced ANC government and ensure a DA-led government is elected to bring improved quality of basic services that residents are in desperate need of.
Councillor Tjaart van der Walt 