The Eastern Cape municipality where projects quietly die
A once-thriving municipal blockyard has been abandoned, while a promised chicken abattoir remains unfinished a decade later.
The Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape has overseen two failed municipal projects: a blockyard and a chicken abattoir.
The blockyard, previously run by the Nkonkobe Local Municipality, produced building blocks and paving slabs. At its peak, it employed 23 people and supplied hardware stores and businesses. However, after a change in management in 2019, the project began to falter. Workers were told the project was no longer profitable, and with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the blockyard was closed.
Meanwhile, the Middledrift chicken abattoir, initially proposed in the Nkonkobe municipality's 2015/16 Integrated Development Plan, has also remained a stagnant project. Despite being listed as a "catalytic intervention" in the 2021/22 IDP, the abattoir was never constructed. Community members had hoped the abattoir would create jobs and support small farmers, but promises of its opening have repeatedly gone unfulfilled.
Attempts to contact Raymond Mhlaba municipality about the status of both projects have so far been unsuccessful.
Written by urgent.news from GroundUp's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
This story
This is one outlet's version. Read the fullest account.
- The Eastern Cape municipality where projects quietly die groundup.org.za
