Note to Editors: Please find attached English and Sesotho soundbites by Cllr Paseka Mokoena and Afrikaans soundbite by Cllr Eleanor Quinta. See attached picture here.
- Taxi ranks in MaP stand as white elephants, neglected and vandalised.
- State-of-the-art facilities were supposed to serve communities.
- This raises questions about planning, consultation, expenditure, and oversight surrounding these projects.
The DA in Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality demands answers from Council over the reckless waste of millions of rands of public money on Taxi ranks that taxi associations rejected because they were allegedly developed without meaningful consultation with the intended users.
These state-of-the-art facilities were supposed to serve communities and support local economic activity. Instead, they stand as white elephants, neglected and vandalised, raising serious questions about planning, consultation, expenditure, and oversight surrounding these projects.
A DA government will not leave communities and end users behind for projects this big, because this is not merely a matter of buildings standing empty. It is about wasteful use of taxpayers’ money and a lack of governance by the governing alliance, while residents continue to face inadequate basic services and deteriorating infrastructure.
The DA will therefore use its representatives in Council to demand a full account of these projects, including how much public funds were spent on all the taxi ranks and who authorised and approved them.
The DA will not allow the municipality to walk away from these projects and pretend that nothing happened. Residents deserve transparency, accountability and consequences when public funds are mismanaged.
Maluti-a-Phofung cannot afford a culture where millions are spent on projects that fail to serve the people they were intended for, while basic municipal services go undone.
Public money belongs to the people, and those entrusted with it must be held accountable for how they spend it.
Maluti-a-Phofung deserves a municipality that will work for them, not against them.