Fed up Hani Park residents protest over water and electricity, calls for removal of ward councillor!

A community of Hani Park in Welkom embarked on a ‘down tools‘ protest action on Thursday morning, as they claim that Matjhabeng municipality has neglected their grievances.

Protests spread in Hani Park with roads shut down as communities called for the municipality to speed up the restoration of services, that includes of repairing the road in Ward 23.

Amongst other underlying issues involves around water backlog and unstable power supply in their areas.

Kasi Voice News reporters were in scene this morning and uncovered that the community staged a protest by closing roads with burning tyres. The community’s plea is for the municipality and the local councillor to swiftly act on their concerns.

Burning tyres are strewn along the roads while debris has been used to block off the opposite lanes.

On Wednesday evening, protest action was reported in the same area.

According to a reliable source in the vicinity of Hani Park, residents are fuming over lack of service delivery and has called for the removal of the ward councillor Tlake Khoarai.

“Protesters are demanding for water and electricity to be supplied, moreover for the eradication water sewage in their area as this is the health hazard,” said the source.

A concerned community leader who want to remain anonymous said the area has been plunged into darkness and their taps often go dry for months without any assistance.

“Our area is facing issues of water and electricity supply. For months now, we have been sitting in the dark and our taps are often without water,” said concerned resident.

Another resident, Lehlohonolo Zonke said, “If our led government was speeding up service delivery, we were not going to hesitate to pay for service delivery, there’s no development in Hani Park, our government doesn’t care about us.”

Residents took to the streets to make a statement that it can’t be business as usual while they continue to suffer.

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Speaking to Kasi Voice News, councillor Khoarai has reiterated that residents have raised their grievances amid lack of adequate service delivery and confirmed that others have called in for his resignation.

“I can confirm that communities are fighting for water and electricity which is a challenge now, and we are busy engaging with Eskom” he said.

“I’m informed there is a call for me to step down and if my people says I must step down as a ward councillor of Hani Park… I won’t hesitate I will step down immediately.

“They made a toyi-toyi last time where they submitted a memorandum and I responded to their memo, and we had a meeting but they were not satisfied and now it states that they wanted to take matters into their own hands, hence there’s a protest,” he said.

When asked about the terrible state of the roads in Hani Park, Khoarai said in 2007 they had a project to install the sewer system, however it was not implemented due to the shady work that led to the mismanagement of funds.

“Over 5 224 houses in Hani Park don’t have sewer, we still using pit latrine system toilets, in 2007 the municipality appointed a contractor which did a shady work where billions were chowed and that contract is being probed, and in November 2018, the municipality had to appoint a new contractor to put sewer,” he said.

“We cannot repair the road now before the sewer system is well developed, the contract said they haven’t concluded their work as yet,” he added.

Khoarai said the ongoing project has been put to halt by the Free State human settlements department after terminating the contract due to non-performance.