As traditional leaders play a pivotal role in community development, the Office of the Speaker of KSD Municipality held a consultation session with KSD Traditional Leaders at Mthatha Stadium on Tuesday, 23 July 2024.
Outlining the purpose of the session, the Speaker of Council, Cllr. Nomfengu Siyo-Sokutu, emphasised the importance of strengthening working relations, to identifying and closing any gaps between traditional leaders and the Municipality for the improvement of the delivery of services that benefit the KSD community.
Part of the issues discussed included the processes of the Municipal Demarcation Board, as the Board is in the process of embarking on a ward delimitation programme. The participation by Traditional Leaders during the process was highlighted since the ward demarcation affects the villages that are governed by traditional councils.
The second issue discussed was the progress of the implementation of resolutions taken at the OR Tambo District Municipality Summit for Traditional Leaders.
The Municipality also unpacked the Token Identifier (TID) Rollover project, which commenced on Monday, July 22, and aims at updating all KSD prepaid meters. Customers are required to reset their meters before November 24, 2024, using a set of tokens called the TID Key Change Token, which will appear on the token receipt upon purchasing electricity. Any token generated after November 24, 2024, will be rejected if the meter is not reset.
Furthermore, the challenge of electricity infrastructure being vandalised, resulting in the Municipality spending millions of rands on repairs, was also part of the agenda.
Concerns were raised by traditional leaders, ranging from strengthening working relations, particularly at the ward level, lack of tools of trade and service delivery improvement. They echoed the Council Speaker’s words about bolstering working relations for the benefit of communities.
