There are no answers from the Greater Tzaneen Municipality to explain why certain areas within its jurisdiction were plunged into darkness for more than five days this week. The generic responses on the WhatsApp groups remain the same; “noted”, “we will revert”, the storm caused some outages” etc. When the power station is contacted, the operators have no idea what the problem is, or when it will be repaired, and the technicians claim that they do not have enough vehicles to access all the affected areas.
The chief-in-charge at the electrical department, Sam Lelope, remains silent and refuses to engage on WhatsApp groups or speak to the media. In fact, each time he has been added to a WhatsApp Power Complaints group, he has removed himself from it. In the past Bulletin has attempted to secure an interview with the man responsible for ensuring that rate payers receive the service they pay for, but Lelope has refused. In a recent parliamentary committee meeting held virtually in July, where the GTM was grilled for their lack of communication and service delivery to especially the farming community, Lelope seemed completely out of touch with the current situation within his department.
“We don’t have issues with capacity to supply,” he said to the Parliamentary committee. He even went so far as to say that the GTM can support any new connections. Which is ironic considering the daily extended power outages which have been ongoing since 2016 in between loadshedding. He also mentioned a partnership agreement with Eskom where the national power supplier agreed to assist the GTM in areas where their customers had no power, but this seemed to be hampered by finances.
“Eskom has said that if they want to continue a collaboration with us (the municipality) they will have to account for all the expenditure they incur when assisting the GTM. That is when they came up with the national active partnering initiative,” Lelope said.
He further denied that the GTM did not accept the assistance offered by farmers and said there have been several instances where farmers have assisted them in the rainy seasons. He said that when the GTM does refuse acceptance, it is because farmers would want to offset the assistance against their municipal accounts.
***Editor’s comment: So, if we understand this correctly, Sam Lelope’s department wants assistance to fix the problems they cannot handle on their own, but they do not want to remunerate those assisting them. In other words, they want you to fix their system so that they can continue billing you for the service they did not provide. And at the same time he refuses to address the concerns of the community by refusing to engage on any platform with anyone.
The technicians claim that they do not have enough vehicles available to tend to all the faults, or even reach all affected areas. This is strange considering that on the 14th of December 2018, the GTM Mayor, Maripe Mangena and the Municipal Manager Thapelo Matlala, handed over five brand new Nissan NP300 4×4 bakkies to the electrical department (a handover ceremony that was not attended by Sam Lelope either). So, what happened to these vehicles?
Bulletin heard a whisper from a source close to the municipality that some of the vehicles’ 4×4 drives were worn out and that some of the vehicles were still at the dealership workshop for maintenance and awaiting payment before being released. We have asked Neville Ndlala, spokesperson for the GTM, to confirm this, and he was busy investigating the matter at the time of going to print.
Since the resignation of the municipal manager, Thapelo Matlala, in September this year, service delivery has declined rapidly. There is currently no permanently appointed accounting officer (municipal manager) and Alec Nkuna is currently acting in the role.
Every three months a new director will have his or her turn to play MM until a real one is appointed. Before Matlala’s appointment in 2018, the Greater Tzaneen Municipality did not have a municipal manager for ten years, only directors making turns to act, in fact, even Lelope was acting municipal manager and electrical director simultaneously at one stage. It was for this reason that Bulletin dubbed the municipal offices “Hollywood”.
In the meantime, the person responsible for the electrical grid, Sam Lelope, can be contacted on 083 450 8732. We encourage our readers to send us their electrical complaints via email to joe@farnorthbulletin.co.za.
