Durban — In an attempt to address the national issue of water and electricity outages, Phoenix residents held a candlelit peace protest to deliver their message to the eThekwini Municipality.
Phoenix residents highlighted their service delivery concerns, which include extended power cuts, water restrictions and erratic refuse removal.
Roy Sukdhev, spokesperson for the protest organisers, the Giving Hope Foundation (GHF), said the purpose was to urge the municipality to assist with the social issues in the area.
Sukdhev highlighted that protests “never have to be destructive to convey a powerful message”. He added that the communities were extremely hurt by the lack of compassion shown by their ward councillors during this period of suffering.
Sukdhev said: “The sufferings of our very hurt people have been brought to the fore. Now serious pressure will be placed on the eThekwini Municipality to fast-track the replacement of the electrical and water infrastructure and improve their waste removal services.”
Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman congratulated the GHF and the community organisations for their participation in this protest. Sooliman regarded this as positive active citizenry.
On Saturday, the DA, led by provincial leader Francois Rodgers MPL, and councillors held a protest at the Phoenix electricity and Ottawa water depots. The protest called for the axing of officials who had failed to act on the persistent outages and issues.
DA spokesperson Nqobile Nhleko said: “While many South Africans are faced with load shedding, communities in the Phoenix area have also had to deal with outages due to collapsing infrastructure. In some instances, water and electricity outages last for days at a time.”
Nhleko said the DA had made multiple requests to the municipality, but no comment has been received.
Nhleko said the DA would hand over a memorandum with grievances and proposed solutions to this service delivery crisis.
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