Nelson Mandela Bay metro executive mayor Babalwa Lobishe. (Photo: Lulama Zenzile / Gallo Images / Die Burger) 
Contract and payment snags have left the Nelson Mandela Bay metro without a call centre and office phone lines for the past month – and councillors have not had official cellphones since Monday.
Frustrated councillors from across the political spectrum in Nelson Mandela Bay voiced their anger at the situation during a city council meeting on Tuesday (September 30).
Acting city manager Ted Pillay said the metro was in a dispute over invoices with cellphone provider MTN. This had been going on “for a while”.
The dispute led to the phone lines to the metro’s call centre and the office lines for ward councillors and officials being cut.
Read more: Nelson Mandela Bay metro runs up a loss of R1.58bn — and hasn’t even paid its phone bill
Pillay said that while the invoices were “incorrect”, he had instructed city officials to pay to have services restored, adding that the contract had another nine months to run, so the situation could be sorted out later.
“I have signed an authority to pay,” he said. The municipality had requested that the lines be unblocked immediately. “I was told that it will be escalated,” he said.
The councillors’ cellphone issues were caused by the metro deciding to switch service providers from Vodacom to Telkom, Pillay said. The present service provider, however, had decided to terminate the phone lines a day early.
Pillay said new phones could be collected at the traffic department and “should be working”.
Mayor unhappy
Executive Mayor Babalwa Lobishe was unhappy with the situation. “We have a non-functional department of corporate services,” she said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be standing here. I don’t know why the city manager has not acted against those who are frustrating the council,” she said.
“Why must we go fetch the phones?” she asked. “They can come deliver them.” She said apart from the phone issue, the same department was delaying recruitment, while also delaying the distribution of council agendas. “Every day they frustrate me,” the mayor said.
She said Pillay was also not following up on integrating reference numbers for service delivery complaints. “There must be consequences.”
DA councillor Siyasanga Sijadu said that Lobishe – during a Heritage Day event on 24 September – had told residents that they should not protest, but should rather report their grievances. “But how can they do it if the phones are off?” she asked. “Where do we report?”
ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom said the mayor should take responsibility for the phone debacle. “She hasn’t done her oversight. She has an MMC for Corporate Services. She has failed us.”
In a letter to the MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Zolile Williams, the DA’s mayoral candidate for the upcoming local government elections, Retief Odendaal, wrote: “While we acknowledge that there appears to be a dispute between the municipality and the service provider regarding the amounts payable, the continued impasse has left a metro of approximately 1.3 million residents without direct access to municipal officials.
“The impact of this situation is profound. Residents are unable to communicate with officials to report service delivery challenges, access information, or resolve urgent municipal queries. This breakdown in communication represents not only a collapse in basic service delivery mechanisms, but also poses a significant risk to governance, accountability and public trust in the municipality.”
Odendaal said the current outage was an “unacceptable state of affairs”. DM