Nelson Mandela Bay executive mayor Babalwa Lobishe. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Lulama Zenzile) 
Last week, during a parliamentary oversight hearing, MPs asked Nelson Mandela Bay executive mayor Babalwa Lobishe what kept her up at night.
She said water and electricity losses and the lack of urgency in filling critical vacancies.
What she didn’t say was that the phone lines to the city’s call centre were still not working. They were switched off in September and have been off for six weeks. Despite promises two weeks ago that the lines would be reinstated as the city undertook to pay MTN, this still has not happened.
On 30 September, outgoing acting city manager Ted Pillay told a council meeting that 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 lines are still not working despite numerous commitments from [the] city’s administrative and political leadership. This is a clear indication of the collapse of the city,” Democratic Alliance leader Rano Kayser said on Friday. “Service delivery has come to a standstill whilst the political leadership are jet setting. Residents as well as ward councillors are unable to report any service delivery challenges nor engage on any matter of interest,” he added.
MTN has promised to respond to questions, but has still not done so.
What Lobishe also didn’t say is that the metro’s contracts to replace streetlights are still not in place.
At the same council meeting, Lobishe promised that there “will be lights” – referring to the replacement of an estimated 10,000 broken street lights in the metro – from 1 October.
Almost two weeks later, the Democratic Alliance’s Ondela Kepe said the contracts were still not in place.
“We do not know why. Last week, we were supposed to do oversight and meet the contractors,” Kepe said. The meeting was cancelled because of service delivery agreements.
“One of the contractors was unable to sign the agreement. Evidently, it was a lie,” Kepe said. “It is a week later, and the contracts are still not in place. There appears to be something else that is the actual problem,” he said.
“What I suspect might be the problem is that one of the contractors objected to the process, and there might be someone within the value chain entertaining this objection. But that is just a suspicion. It doesn’t make sense to say it is the service-level agreement, and a whole week later, the person who must sign is still not available. I am growing very weary,” Kepe said.
At the parliamentary oversight meeting, Lobishe said the four-year-old SIU investigation into the city’s streetlight contracts was ongoing. “We have paid them for their service, but we have not seen a final report yet,” she said.
She said the metro was hamstrung in investigating the matter itself, as it couldn’t do “one investigation on top of the other”.
“There has been mismanagement in the department,” Lobishe said.
Metro communications director Sithembiso Soyaya has not responded to questions on either the phone lines or the streetlights.
Acting city manager Lonwabo Ngoqo told the oversight meeting that current service delivery levels in the metro had been marked as “distressed” by the National Treasury. He said he was using this as “motivation”.
“It keeps us motivated. Service delivery is indicated as “distressed” with issues ranging from water losses [to] electricity losses,” he said. He claimed interventions were in place.
Read more: Nelson Mandela Bay metro runs up a loss of R1.58bn — and hasn’t even paid its phone bill
Chief financial officer Jackson Ngcelwane said four debt collectors had been appointed to help improve the metro’s dismal collection rate. DM