To teach a child the power of observation, you play the game where the child needs to find a certain character hidden within a picture.
Trick is the character is camouflaged by a spectrum of colour, action and activity. It is with great glee when a child spots, let us say, Nemo lurking behind a rock.
For children, the game is great fun, while it’s potentially a doorway to a headache for parents.
It seems, these days, our metro is also playing this game. It is called Finding the Contractor.
And it seems to be a lot of fun because the metro loves playing this game, even though for residents this game morphs into a nightmare.
Maybe one should propose creating a board game based on this concept, and you could have some lovely streets on the board that are overgrown with grass and filled with potholes.
After all, the contractors are apparently missing in Ekurhuleni, hiding somewhere as if the coronavirus was about to jump from the nearest shadow.
In the meantime, street lights are not working and the city is falling apart.
In Boksburg, we have some serious issues with the state of the cemetery.
The reason for this sad state of affairs is that the metro is looking to appoint a contractor. This is after the last contract expired middle of 2019.
Is the contractor hiding that it takes council almost a year to appoint someone to maintain the cemetery?
Scribante lifts are still broken after years of suffering for the frail and the elderly because, yes you are right, the metro still needs to appoint a contractor to install the lifts.
To make matters worse, hell probably has a better chance right now of freezing over because the lifts have to be shipped from China.
And with all the drama globally with the coronavirus, don’t hold your breath for a ship to arrive soon with a sticker ‘Made in China’.
We sat with the delayed EMPD specialised precinct to be built in Boksburg. How about R100 for anybody who can guess the cause for the delay? Yes, the metro is looking for a contractor.
Early last year, the roof at the Boksburg library got damaged by the weather. It is still not repaired, even though it takes quicker to build a massive shopping centre.
The problem? Yes, the metro is looking for a contractor.
For those who live or work in the CBD, now and then an odour will slap them in the face, reminding them of the Boksburg lake which still has not been remediated.
The metro has spent millions on coming up with a game plan to save the water body, but the execution sorely lacks. All that the metro has done was spend millions on revamping the recreational area around the lake, which has been subsequently vandalised.
It is understood the metro has only of late put out a tender to find a contractor for this remediation job, even though the opted method has still been labelled as a recipe for disaster.
Granted, one understands there are all kinds of red tape to negotiate when it comes to the metro’s supply chain and tenders, but it has become a trend where service delivery stalls because contractors have not been appointed.
Is there so much work that contractors are too busy? Or is it just another case of poor governance and management?But I bet it is on the latter.
Sadly, it seems this supply chain is not really working so well, like the chain of a bike that keeps slipping from the gears. Not even the government gravy squeezed from the taxpayer can keep this bike going.
There was certainly a bit of joy and excitement when it was announced in Parliament that Ekurhuleni will be a home of a university, even though it will only cater for specialised fields of study.
It might, however, take some time before such a university materialises. After all, the metro is constantly looking for contractors and it seems to constantly run out of money to complete projects, such as the fire station in Kempton Park that is still not completed after years of construction.
If the university does magically appear soon, like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, then we know that the joke is on us and it is all about political will and intention, not so much red tape.
But then again, it remains a game no matter how we spin it, because the dice of greed and corruption are constantly in play.
Problem is only a few people are having a ball, while many others are suffering in the wake of intensifying incompetence.
