LETTER: Law gets them off hook

Mmusi Maimane’s patronising op-ed refers (“Election is an opportunity to change the party system”, September 21.) 

Every aspirant town councillor currently undertakes that after the election they will create employment, fill the potholes, ensure freeloaders with illegal electrical connections pay the correct charges for electricity, and generally wave a magic wand to bring about perfection.

Yet it is no secret that there are hundreds of municipalities, both big and small, facing service delivery problems. The current councillors, when they were seeking election, and the newly elected councillors, will encounter the same problem.

For example, if a roads gang supervisor is instructed to fill potholes, are he and his gang going to jump to it with alacrity? Or, much more likely, set about with dumb insolence scratching about one or two potholes and then breaking to boil up tea, and then break for lunch, and then boil up afternoon tea before it’s knock-off time?

Any action taken against these “workmen” to achieve productivity, let alone increase it, is required to be in terms of the Labour Relations Act, and all the other detrimental laws governing employment.

Until the foreman and his gang members are no longer feather-bedded by the Labour Relations Act and similar socialistic legislation there will never be any delivery, service or otherwise, and aspirant councillors can promise a blue moon but it won’t happen.

Errol Callaghan, Goodwood

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