Makana officials and councillors swapped suits for overalls on Wednesday and joined municipal workers cleaning up the town to celebrate Mandela Day.
Makana officials and councillors swapped suits for overalls on Wednesday and joined municipal workers cleaning up the town to celebrate Mandela Day.
The City Hall bosses spent their 67 minutes of community service shoulder to shoulder with employees as they helped patch potholes, fix burst pipes, paint schools and repainted road-markings in the municipality's 14 wards.
Proceedings started in Albany Road, where they sang Happy Birthday and got on with the day's work. "We patched potholes from Beaufort Street to Dr Jacob Zuma Drive and fixed taps that were leaking and toilets that were blocked," said newly appointed Technical and Infrastructure services director Thembinkosi Myalato.
"We also got support from community members in all the wards and after the response we received from them, we plan to continue with this venture." He said instead of having speeches and long programmes, they had decided to focus on service-delivery in the most practical way possible, working as a team.
One of the places they went to was Ethembeni Centre, Makanaskop Crèche and Themba TB Hospital. "We will carry on until next month because we want our communities to see that we are serious about service-delivery. What is good about this is the team spirit. We are working with ward councillors and communities, which is how the municipality is supposed to work," said Myalato.
He said this was not only a way to celebrate Mandela's birthday but it also helped boost staff morale. "It was like a team-building exercise: everyone came on board," Myalato said. "We learnt that communities have lost trust in service-delivery, but that is going to change."
Myalato said all he wanted his staff to do was to work smart and deliver on the promises which they made on their first day at work. "I encourage them to think about those promises they made in interviews and work hard. I am not saying people must work like slaves but they must make an effort and make service delivery a success in this municipality."
Acting Mayor for the day, Nomhle Gaga, said she was very happy that Mandela Day had been a success for them. "This initiative was well planned and we got support from the communities in all the wards. Everybody was enthusiastic – it was a team effort," she said.
"We re-marked the roads in Seymour Street, painted the bridge in Alicedale and we cleaned up in Riebeeck East. We want to expand this and continue with this work – maybe call in co-operatives to assist and earn some money for themselves," Gaga said.
At Makanaskop Crèche they fixed a damaged sewerage pipe and at Themba TB hospital they helped stamp new sheets that had arrived.
