Mayor lashes licensing centre ‘sabotage’

TSHWANE mayor Solly Msimanga has expressed concern at the slow pace of service delivery to the public when he visited the Akasia licensing centre.

Shortages of staff partly contributed to the long queues and unsatisfactory services experienced by members of the public, he said.

He also singled out the shortage of equipment like eye-testing machines and computers for data-capturing purposes.

Msimanga’s visit to the centre was part of his duties to perform an oversight role on the type of services rendered by officials to the public.

The centre has been overwhelmed by motorists after three other licensing centres closed down.

Motorists told the Cape Times’ sister publication, the Pretoria News, that they joined the queues as early as 5am with the hope of being served before the cut-off number of 200 people a day.

The Akasia, Waltloo and Centurion licensing departments had been broken into over the past four months and the equipment stolen.

Msimanga said: “It is not ideal to have people standing in a queue for three to four hours.” He said one of city’s priorities was to critical vacancies.

Msimanga also expressed concern at the break-ins. “I still do believe it is sabotage,” he said.

“When you start analysing what has been taken and what was left behind, you realise that this can never be opportunistic thuggery. If somebody leaves a R500 000 piece of machine and takes a R2 000 the fill piece, what does that tell you?”

Robbers targeting the centres took “exactly what they know will cause the greatest of damage to the city”, the mayor said.

Msimanga said the city had prioritised that all security and safety measures be enhanced speedily to prevent the recurrence of these incidents. There were plans to install security technology.