Durban - DA councillors who are members of the executive committee in eThekwini Municipality are crying foul over the lack of interpreter services during the meetings of the committee.
A special executive committee meeting held online on Thursday morning faced challenges because of the lack of interpreters.
DA councillors Yogis Govender and Andre Beetge said they were unable to engage in some of the discussions because some of the comments were in Zulu. There was a similar complaint at Tuesday’s executive committee meeting.
Govender said this was a serious and ongoing problem.
“It must be noted that 99% of exco meetings see no interpretation. Time and time again DA members have asked for interpretation and the mayor then looks around, relying on officials who are not qualified interpreters to come to their rescue. In this meeting he had asked the head of communications to interpret because the interpreters were unavailable.
“When it was raised that there should be some disciplinary steps taken against these interpreters who form part of a unit that actually do not provide services and are absent from meetings, the mayor became aggressive and started shouting down DA speakers, saying that interpretation had always been available to exco members.
“This meeting (Thursday online) quickly descended into chaos.The DA could not sit in a meeting discussing such critical issues that have affected the city, hoping to be progressive but being gagged from speaking and gagged from understanding ... and opted to walk out.”
More than an hour after Thursday’s meeting had started, the city officials announced that an individual from languages had been brought in to assist with interpretation.