The Democratic Alliance (DA) in eThekwini has from the 25th of June 2020 been continuously following up with officials regarding the slow progress by the municipality to safely open much -needed libraries and pools. Despite having months during lockdown to prepare for the reopening of libraries and pools, the city has once again failed dismally with service delivery.
Libraries have remained closed since the beginning of lockdown and were set to reopen on level 2 of the lockdown. When level 2 regulations were published, the DA requested information on when libraries were set to open as they were still closed two weeks into level 2 lockdown.
The department responded that they are waiting for National and Province of application and guidelines that are in the regulations.
The municipality failed to properly plan for the immediate opening of libraries under level 2 as regulations do have provision for libraries to be open.
Majority of the libraries are only set to open in October 2020.
Pools still remain in a shocking state as still no contract for chlorine has been in place and some pools have now been drained. The state of readiness of the pools from contracts to repairs have been left to the last minute.
This is an issue the DA brought up months ago so we are not left with a situation where pools will not be ready for Summer season. Yet this now seems like it will be the case.
The DA Community Services committee has requested and awaits reports in the next committee on the state of pools and libraries in the city.
Residents deserve better after months of lockdown and the city administration must answer for this failure.