Despite its charming exterior, Boksburg’s biggest library, located next to the Boksburg Civic Centre, has been facing a number of major issues in recent months.
The roofing structure of the library collapsed in February and the City of Ekurhuleni’s online library system had been intermittently offline – inconveniencing many library users.
The municipality further decided to close the library’s adult section indefinitely due to the damaged part of the roofing structure, which collapsed onto the adult library section during the recent heavy rains.
The Advertiser earlier this month requested an update on the progress of the work to repair the damaged roofing structure, but the metro has been unforthcoming about its plans to address all the library woes.
One of the library users, Larry Green, stated that it’s been almost three months of struggling to get service at the library.
“Over the past about three months, on visiting the children’s library, I have been informed that their system is offline and therefore they cannot scan any books and so have absolutely no record of which books are taken or returned, with the result that we are now unable to take out any books.
“The problem has been reported by the staff and is not being attended to and they get no feedback at all.
“The main library is in darkness and locked as part of the ceiling collapsed. This happened at least three months ago and no attempt has been made to carry out repairs,” said Green.
Green demanded to know when the metro will attend to all the problems.
Ward 32 councillor Marius de Vos accused municipal officials of not doing what they are paid to do.
Early in March, the metro said library services were offline due to the roll-out of the new system and added that other services were uninterrupted.
ALSO READ: Library services offline due to roll out of new system
“The City is rolling out a new library service system across all city libraries and the licence for the old system that is being replaced has since expired,” said metro spokesperson Themba Gadebe.
“Libraries are therefore using a manual system of issuing and receiving library material. However, other library services are not affected as users can still access the latest material through the e-Book system.
“There is also internet connectivity, which enables users to use the library computers for other internet-based functions, such as job applications, research, registrations, etc.” said Gadebe.
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