What’s happened to the money?

BLAME or finger-pointing – it’s a political tool, but the sadness/tragedy is looking at our beloved city of Port Elizabeth or our country and we have to say: where has it all gone wrong, and what are we doing about this as taxpayers, ratepayers, electricity payers, with no evidence of where that money is being spent?

Port Elizabeth has deteriorated into a shoddy, shabby town – potholes included – and with the pathetic childlike political wrangling, wrestling for power of the mayor and leader of the ruling party, we have no qualified city engineer or town planner or decision-making, it seems.

Always the story is no money. One has to ask: into whose pockets are our rates and taxes going, not into roads, not into hospitals, not into schools, not into building maintenance?

The fact that the haematology unit at the Provincial Hospital has not materialised due to no money is another tragedy. Lives in the Eastern Cape are being lost. Be it local government, provincial government (Bhisho) or just central government, the story is no money for doctors – surely this is disgraceful.

There’s road carnage, but no traffic officers behind bushes any more.

This worked, same as traffic officers in the city.

Likewise look at education. It is amazing how a school inspector kept the staffs of schools on their toes.

Likewise teacher training colleges produced properly trained teachers.

Along with this all one can say is: what sort of a nation reappoints a leader who has allowed or enabled such deterioration? Such slackness? Has this leader in any way improved the lives of his poorer township followers? It is the same story: no money.

Is it not time for those of us who care for our city to start by taking a stand against a council who might as well not be there at all?

We can point fingers at those who mismanage our money and our city – what about Afcon that we cannot afford? No money for it?