GMM Mayor meets with angry Bethal residents after residents block town on Wednesday night.
Residents of Bethal gathered on Tuesday night at the municipal yard across the N17 Filling station to voice their anger at GMM and its workers as the power was turned of for a second night in a row over wage disputes.
The residents decided on Wednesday night to block all roads through Bethal for a few hours to voice their anger at the load shedding that has plagued Bethal for so long. The Bulletin reported on this before.
WATCH THE LIVE VIDEO HERE OF THE RESIDENTS BLOCKING THE ROAD.
The Mayor met with residents of Bethal on Thursday night to address their grievances. This meeting was facilitated by the area commander of the SAPS.
GMM management released the following statement after the meeting.
The GMM Executive Mayor, Municipal Manager, Director for Technical Services and his team of senior officials have met with Bethal residents and business owners today 20 August 2020 at the Council Chambers.
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The meeting was chaired by Mr Ziyad Dangor, Chairperson of the Bethal Business Association.
A series of items were discussed which included inter alia, the outstanding debt for Bethal, Notified Maximum Demand (NMD), electricity challenges, the Eskom and Rand Water Accounts, loadshedding, illegal connections, schedule for Rotational Loadshedding, refuse removal, roads to name just a few.
It should be particularly mentioned that the meeting was conducted in an open and transparent manner despite the fact that there were heated moments which were robust but progressive.
As a matter of fact, the meeting made a plethora of proposals, suggestions and best practices with a view of finding possible and workable solutions for all the challenges that GMM is currently grappling with.
Importantly, the meeting agreed that going forward, the Municipal Manager will liaise with the team through Ms Hilda Pretorious for updates on all issues discussed and other service delivery related matters.
The meeting noted with appreciation the behind-the-scenes engagements and progress that GMM is involved in which are aimed at ameliorating the service delivery challenges in Bethal in particular and GMM in toto.
But, it was strongly mentioned that GMM must bring its house into order and improve the delivery of services to the public.
To this end, the Municipal Manager will henceforth share the feedback of GMM-ESKOM Engagements regarding the NMD issue with Ms Ms Pretorious in order to keep the public in the loop.
The Executive Mayor welcomed the positive engagements, profusely apologised to the residents/business owners and appealed for collective wisdom in dealing with the challenges.
The meeting agreed that such-like further engagements will be pursued in order to ensure that the challenges are addressed and monitoring implemented.
NB: Further Updates on these issues will be shared with all and sundry as and when they are made available.
