Ward 101 DA councillor Malcolm de Klerk has disputed Tshwane Mayor Nasiphi Moya's claims of improved service delivery since taking office in October.
De Klerk's criticism comes after Moya reported progress in several areas, such as streetlight repairs and reducing water leaks.
Moya's leadership began after a deal between the ANC, EFF and ActionSA, which led to her election as the new mayor of Tshwane.
After assuming office her executive unveiled a 100-day action plan aimed at transforming the city and reviving service delivery for all residents.
The plan, launched under the banner Re A Spana (meaning "We are Working"), focuses on tackling the R6.76 billion Eskom debt, and boosting revenue collection, among other service delivery objectives.
However, De Klerk's statement suggested that there may be differing opinions on the effectiveness of Moya's efforts.
In a social media post, he criticised Moya for making “dodgy claims about improved service delivery”, saying Tshwane has been swamped by electricity and water outages in the past two months.
He said Moya’s party ActionSA also made “outrageous claims” of fixing public lighting “despite reliable figures not being available to councillors, and the public complaining about an unprecedented slump in service delivery since the ANC takeover”.
“In fact, the ANC’s own explanation of the service interruptions was that it was due to the DA sabotaging infrastructure installations. This claim was of course complete rubbish, but was at least an attempt to explain the decline,” De Klerk said.
According to him, Moya’s strategy is to claim easy and entirely fictitious victories, instead of doing the work needed to improve service delivery.
“This work includes filling the jobs in the street light delivery team mandated by the previous DA-led administration. We ask the ‘Puppet Mayor’ not to take the public for fools, and desist from releasing fake information about the performance of the City,” he said.
In a recent statement, Moya said the metro has improved public lighting in various areas after at least 9 471 street lights were repaired and replaced since October.
She announced that the city's seven regional operations centres are on track to eliminate water leak backlogs by the end of December 2024.
According to her, the city has already seen a significant reduction of 1 689 leaks since its inception of the 100-day action plan.
“On reducing electricity distribution issues – 90% of which are cable faults – we have seen an overall reduction of 35% and have already exceeded our 100-day action plan target with 7%,” she said.
Pretoria News