Mayor warns community members to protect state buildings

MTUBATUBA Mayor, Cllr Velangenkosi Gumede urged the community that it is a crime to vandalise government buildings and infrastructure and warned that those who are caught committing such crimes will be arrested and prosecuted .

Gumede was speaking during the official opening of a community hall at eMfekayi on Friday.

‘We urge the community to protect these structures as our municipality invested about R2-million to build this hall, which is an asset to you all, so you should be aware that acts of vandalising is a criminal offence.

‘I also want to remind our employees that they must follow the proper channels when dealing with requests from the community who want to use this facility. We have a Community Services department which is responsible for dealing with such requests,’ said Gumede.

Gumede told the community that they must know that it doesn’t cost much to hire a hall to host functions such as weddings.

‘We do charge the community when they want to use our hall facilities but this isn’t much. This is to cover anything that gets broken during an event so we are able to repair or replace it.

‘I would also like to thank our local Induna, Zaba Mkhwanazi for providing us with land to build such a community facility,’ said Gumede.

Gumede further explained that as the municipality, they will be forced to take legal action against any employee who is found to have issued a permit to use a hall without following proper internal channels.

Induna Mkhwanazi said it was not difficult to provide the municipality with land to build a community hall because he is aware of the community’s plight.

‘I was born in this area and we have been suffering for a long time. In some cases we had to disband our meetings owing to the bad weather, that is why it was easy for me to provide the municipality with this piece of land to build such a community facility,’ said Mkhwanazi.

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