‘Soshanguve residents’ needs being addressed’
ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa said he was satisfied that many of the needs of people living in Soshanguve, north of Pretoria, were being addressed.
|||Pretoria – African National Congress (ANC) Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said he was satisfied that many of the needs of people living in Soshanguve, a township in the north of the country’s capital Pretoria, were being addressed.
Ramaphosa was speaking while on a door-to-door campaign in the area, meeting with residents.
He said many he had spoken to had expressed their satisfaction with services the ANC-led government had provided them. However, there were some areas residents felt still needed to be addressed by government.
Among the problems residents raised with Ramaphosa was a lack of proper housing, an inconsistent electricity metering system installed by the Tshwane municipality, roads not being tarred, high crime levels, and unemployment.
Ramaphosa described his visit to Soshanguve as pleasant because residents there told him they were ready to reinstate the ANC in Tshwane during the upcoming municipal elections.
“Today is particularly pleasant because wherever we went we found that people are ready for the elections. In fact they want the elections to happen as soon as possible so that the can carry on with their lives and they can empower their councilors to do the work that they want to be done by the local government and government as a whole,” he said.
“The people still have a number of the needs, but many of their needs have been addressed. They have water, electricity, houses and what is left is tarred road and jobs and we were able to explain to them that we are working very hard to turn the economy around so that it could produce jobs.”
A disabled 54 year old man, Moses Seanego of Block Y in Soshanguve, told Ramaphosa of the “appalling” conditions he was living in. Seanego lives in a two-roomed shack with his two daughters and four grandchildren. He insisted that the deputy president take a diversion from his planned route to visit his shack and see first hand the conditions disabled people in the area were living in.
Seanego said he had been living in his broken corrugated iron shack since 1992 and was forced to remain there because several promises by councillors that they would build him a RDP (reconstruction and development programme) house have been broken.
“Look at the kind of a condition that I live in and I am disabled. I have been promised an RDP house on several occasions but nothing came through. Take for my situation, if government plans to build a house for me, they should consider my condition and build a house suitable for people in my condition so that I can freely move in it, and in a situation where the house burns I am enabled to escape [rather] than burning in it,” Seanego told Ramaphosa when he arrived at the shack.
African News Agency