Email on Ward 8 meeting of 15 March 2021

This email on the Ward 8 meeting of 15 March 2021 was sent on 7 April 2021, It was not put onto social media at the time as was requested from Government. The cover up and lack of action necessitates doing so now.

An e mail on the Ward 8 committee meeting of 15 March 2021 was sent to the Ward 8 councillor, the Mayor (who acknowledged the email), the area Manager Hermanus Administration Anver Wyngaard, the Municipal Manager and Arnie Africa DA Proportional Representative.

This e mail was sent by Michael Austin personally and did not represent Botfriends as I was informed by certain members that I could no longer represent Botfriends even though no one else had been elected to represent Botfriends. A number of members of Botfriends had formed an interim committee to support the salvage of Botfriends, they supported the ongoing Botfriends issues. Unfortunately, this was also shut down by other than environmental issues.

The gist of the email was as reported in the previous report on the meeting of 15 March 2021 and included the report on the February 2021 meeting as an attachment.

In addition I included the following requests on the matter

1 The minutes of the meeting of the 8 February 2021 need to be corrected.

2 The minutes of the meeting of 15 March 2021 need to reflect the position on these issues.

3 The agenda of the next Ward 8 meeting needs to include the five items listed above.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Michael Austin

No response was received from the email on corrections to the Ward 8 meeting minutes of 15 March 2021 was obtained. The following meeting just ignored the issues or reported that the matters were closed. I was unable to attend the following meeting which was entirely a zoom meeting.

This is not the first time that there has been a breakdown in the public participation of affairs of service delivery, especially as regards environmental issues. Numerous incidents of environmental damage in the ward 8 area have been reported to Western Cape Government, as far as the Minister of Environment, BREF, the green scorpions and OSM. Some have been ignored, or had some sort of investigation, usually then getting lost in red tape and then getting covered up. Occasionally, something has been done eventually, but the problem solving has not been complete (such as the fence built into a wetland). The fence was removed, but the other environmental damage done was not repaired or even attended to.