ORANGE GROVE COMMUNITY COMPLAINS ABOUT POOR SERVICE DELIVERY IN BUFFALO CITY MUNICIPALITY

The route to East London Airport from the city and the the suburbs, you are likely to pass by a township called Orange Grove. When traveling down into Orange Grove Township, on the left is an informal settlement which residents refer to as “Emagalini”, which when translated into English are shacks.

The settlements have no proper roads and the shacks are crammed together. The residents have no electricity, so they are forced to use paraffin lamps or resort to illegal connections (izinyoka) for lighting.

The people affected are those that stay in RDP houses in Orange Grove because the residents living in the shacks are illegally connecting their wires from the transformer that is meant to supply electricity to the RDP houses. Community member Nosipho Mxoli says the residents in the informal settlement were supposedly to have been built houses eight years ago.

Transformers are exploding and people’s electrical appliances are damaged because of the electrical fault due to these illegal connections.

Siyabonga Mgoqi, a community leader says they are being failed by the government, and that people are getting electrocuted by these illegal connections.

The pair say they have been trying to engage with their ward councillor, but to no avail.

“When we try to contact the councillor, he would instead say that he is busy and would get back to us”, said Mgoqi.

Mgoqi suggests that the municipality install   new transformers to accommodate each shack dweller. He goes on to conclude that if each shack had its own meter box, then residents would buy their own electricity.