TWENTY Seven people are expected to appear at Delareyville Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for public violence. It is alleged that a group of people blocked R507 road from Geysdorp to Delareyville with burning tyres and dangerous objects in protest over lack of basic service delivery in Delareyville.

North West Police spokesperson, Lieutenant Col Pelonomi Makau said the other group blocked N14 road from Vryburg to Delareyville and the N14 from Sannieshof to Delareyville with burning tyres and stones.

“This disturbed the flow of traffic and police are at all these roads monitoring the situation. According to the information, the community also looted the foreign national shops at Extension 7 in the township and as well as in town. The information we received is that the community is protesting for the lack of service delivery.

“Police managed to arrest 27 people (19 women and 9 men) and charged them for public violence. The perpetrators are expected to appear at the Delareyville Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday,” Makau said.

Tswaing local municipality mayor, Mangie Malwane said: “The community uses lack of service delivery as scapegoat. They submitted memorandum last week and alleged that our electricity tariffs is high. They also demanded 500 RDP houses at Senthumule Informal Settlement outside Delareyville.

“The community also alleged that there is lack of water in the area. However, water challenge is all over across South Africa. We are working firmer as the municipality to ensure that our people receive water constantly.”

Malwane further said the electricity tariffs are approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). She added that NERSA is a regulatory authority established as a juristic person in terms of Section 3 of the National Energy Regulator Act, 2004 (Act No. 40 of 2004).

“NERSA’s mandate is to regulate the electricity, piped-gas and petroleum pipelines industries in terms of the Electricity Regulation Act, 2006 (Act No. 4 of 2006), Gas Act, 2001 (Act No. 48 of 2001) and Petroleum Pipelines Act, 2003 (Act No. 60 of 2003). So it is inaccurate that our tariffs are high.

“The mandate of NERSA is to derive from legislation governing and prescribing the role and functions of the Regulator. The municipality was also marred by cable theft recently. We were forced to replace a cable cost R500 000 twice in a short space of time because of theft,” she said.

Malwane said the community also demanded 500 RDP houses at Senthomule Informal Settlement. She further said the people occupied the land illegally and the municipality cannot accept that behaviour.

“We cannot have illegal informal settlements mushrooming and people demand houses afterwards. The municipality is guided by policies and regulations and we need to be wary about that. There are lot of service delivery taking place within Tswaing local municipality.

“We still believe that this is a smear campaign orchestrated by disgruntled individuals against municipality. They want to disrupt the smooth-running of the municipality. We are currently constructing a sewerage system at ward 14. The municipality is also building internal roads to make them accessible,” she said.-Newsnote