By Staff Reporter
CLARENS – The Free State department water and sanitation’s head of communication Larry Crisp has urged the media and community members to join hands in the fight against vandalization of infrastructure in the municipalities.
Crisp said this during an engagement workshop between communication officers in the Thabo Mofutsanyana district municipality and media in the area, at Clarens in the Dihlabeng municipality on Wednesday last week.
“When writing your stories please can you assist us on reporting about vandalisim. Vandalism of infrastructure is a real issue and the problem is that people are not reporting. People know these guys who are stealing these things and know probably someone. We really ask for your assistance to root out this thing of vandalism. We cannot be spending lots of money on these projects and after one or two days people come and steal or vandalise.
Chipping in stakeholder and liaison person at Map water Mojalefa Abel Miya said , “We must improve our own internal systems. They are very weak; we will always look for someone to come and assist us, instead of solving own challenges,” he said while responding to a call made by a radio journalist from Dihlabeng who put the blame of vandalisim at the doorstep of the municipality.
He said some officials and politicians politicise problems of water .
Maluti-a-Phofung local municipality ‘s spokesperson Thabo Kessah wondered what had become of society, given that when one attacks a community, their relatives feel the same pain as they are also part of that community.
“Some of these people who do exactly that, they have relatives, uncles and grandmothers living in that area. I mean what comes to your mind when you do that to your own just because it is politics.”
Thabo Mofutsanyana district municipality’s head of communication who was also facilitating the workshop, Mamogolo Moshugi announced that the new water quality testing at Kestell will cut the costs of travelling to Bloemfontein just to test water quality.
“You will no longer have to travel to Bloemfontein to test water quality. It will be easier for us here in the Thabo Mofutsanyana district municipality.
The department of water and sanitation as well as that of cooperative governance and traditional affairs also formed part of the engagements.
Cogta’s Vuyo Vumandleni shared light on how a government chat is going to be implemented and its importance to fast track response to community’s challenges and reports on poor service delivery.
The provincial Government Communication and Information Service , GCIS manager Yolisi Blom and ICASA were also in attendance; they explained the procedures to access opportunities offered by their perspective institutions to the media, with more focus to community radio stations.
