The new mayor of the Vhembe District Municipality, Cllr Tshitereke Matibe, visited the community of Gidjana, near the Kruger National Park, as part of a fact-finding mission to get information regarding the needs of the community last week.

At the Gidjana/Magona Traditional Authority, the community had the opportunity to raise their concerns about “poor delivery of service in the area". Some of the issues raised by the community were lack of housing, rewards for home-based care centres, lack of water, lack of secondary schools and transport, clinics, jobs, youth empowerment and the poor road conditions.

Some even suggested that there should be street lights in the area in order to protect the community from stray animals from the nearby Kruger National Park. The community also suggested that there should be a tourism development programme as a link to the Kruger Park.

Hosi Nxumalo urged his community to support the municipality.  Nxumalo is the chairperson of the House of Traditional Leaders in Vhembe. He warned, however, that the support “will not stay forever if there is no service delivery to the community”.

Thulamela Mayor Cllr Grace Mahosi, who also accompanied Matibe, said that the issue of street lights would be addressed through a pilot project, where all streets in Vhembe would be provided with lights from solar panels. Mahosi said the municipality would investigate the possibility to start the tourism project.

Matibe said he was happy that the community was able to express their concerns to him, which would help in identifying their needs. He said the issue of lack of transport for children to school was as a result of  a lack of service providers when tenders were issued by the provincial department of transport.

On the issue of roads, Matibe said his office would help the community with information that would help them to know who was responsible for which roads, as some must be catered for by the provincial and national government.

He said the department of education would help in the provision of a secondary school.

A temporary arrangement was going to be made by the district municipality to make sure that people received water from boreholes, while the process of drawing water from the Nandoni dam to the community was being finalized.

Old dams in the area would be refurbished in order to make sure that there was water for livestock in the area, said Matibe.