Backyarders: Cosatu takes city to court
Capetown-150618-Chantel Kruger in Parkwood is one of the Backyader who have recieved electricity as part of backyarders project by City of Cape Town in Parkwood-Picture by BHEKI RADEBE Capetown-150618-Chantel Kruger in Parkwood is one of the Backyader who have recieved electricity as part of backyarders project by City of Cape Town in Parkwood-Picture by BHEKI RADEBE
Cape Town - Cosatu has asked the South African Human Rights Commission to investigate the City of Cape Town’s provision of basic services for backyard dwellers.
In a letter addressed to the Western Cape provincial manager, Karam Singh, Cosatu’s provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich said: “The failure to provide basic services to backyard dwellers is in breach of the City of Cape Town’s promises and a disregard of the Cape Flats communities.”
He said instead of spending the city’s budget on essential services for informal settlements, the city was incurring “wasteful and frivolous expenditure” in less urgent areas. This included the allocation of R50 million for advertising, R30m on soccer matches and R40m for the World Design Capital “gimmick”, said Ehrenreich, who is also an ANC councillor in the City of Cape Town.
The commission’s spokesman, Isaac Mangena, confirmed that it had heard about Cosatu’s letter, but it still had to follow up with the trade union to confirm that it was legitimate and not related to a previous complaint. He added that if the complaint dealt with service delivery, the commission would look into it.
But mayor Patricia de Lille slammed the trade union’s complaint to the commission as a “waste of time and money”. She referred to Cosatu’s previous case against the city, lodged with the Equality Court, about the skewed rollout of the MyCiTi service which the union claimed favoured the more affluent areas.
The case was withdrawn shortly before it was to be heard.
“This ill-informed, misguided, lazy councillor who, after four years, still doesn’t understand how government works needs to stop wasting time and money. Unfortunately, we had to spend approximately R371 000 of ratepayers’ money on what was nothing more than Cosatu wasting the court’s time.”
In its complaint, Cosatu said the city had only set aside R20m for services in backyard communities over the next three years.
“The city knows that more funds are required to fairly and equitably roll out the services to desperate communities, yet it continues to spend the public funds on less urgent areas,” said Ehrenreich.
But De Lille said Cape Town was the only metro in the country that provided basic services to backyard residents on council-owned properties.
anel.lewis@inl.co.za
Cape Argus