Questions over metro status

17 Jun 2009


THE municipal manager and the city council must be living in a world of their own believing that this city is worthy of, or can attain, metropolitan status. Recent frightening events indicate that its managers are absolutely incapable of running an ordinary city, let alone a metropolitan one.

The latest fiasco at the Colonial Building with inadequate firefighting vehicles and equipment confirms that it cannot protect its citizens properly. One wonders what the end result would have been if it had been a fire in a high building such as Park Avenue with many people trapped by flames and smoke attended by such an inefficient fire and rescue services department?

The short-staffed and equally inefficient traffic department is another essential service department but it is receiving regular complaints from the community about poor traffic management and assistance with the free flow of traffic in the city: so much so that the provincial road traffic inspectorate has to step in and set up roadblocks to deal with inebriated motorists.

Add to these the refuse removal, electricity and water departments with their problems and we have an abominable situation far removed from a city to be proud of, or a capital city worth boasting about. Metropolitan status? You’ve got to be kidding.

JAMES MILLS
Pelha, Pietermaritzburg