Members of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) have raised concern over the North West government’s inability to deal with their poor road infrastructure. The NCOP voiced their unhappiness with the state of affairs during their visit to the province.
They are on a week-long visit to various provinces, assessing government’s capacity to respond to the needs of communities. The North West has a road network of approximately 1 960 kilometres but close to 80 percent of the infrastructure is in a bad state. The roads are riddled with potholes due to a lack of proper maintenance.
“North West is prone to underspending of funds for years. But it’s evident that up to now, the political will does not exist. We must spend funds to have a return on investments because service delivery is very bad,” says the Freedom Front Plus’ Fanie Du Toit.
“It seems there is no control there is no political will to change around and to see that people receive what they have to receive,” says the DA’s Carien Visser.
China Dodovu who is heading the delegation, admits that there are problems.
“It does show that there are a lot of problems, there are a lot of challenges that need to be attended to by the province as you can see the North West has got a lot of potholes in the municipalities. The provincial roads are also not good, and what also disturbs me is the fact that the province does not regard this as an emergency that needs to be attended to and we are going to take this matter forward,” says Dodovu.
