Fallen trees raises concerns
“The complaint was booked to be attended to first thing on January 27, but unfortunately due to repairs on several of the vehicles, we were unable to respond immediately,” the department said.
Concerns have been raised over the state of trees planted on pavements in Edenvale.
Recently, several large branches broke off of a tree along Sixth Avenue.
“When it happened there was a loud bang. We actually though someone was trying to break into the property,” said resident Mr Wayne Petersen.
More than a week after the initial complaint was reported to council, the branches were removed.
Mr Petersen contacted the NEWS on Monday last week to report his frustration at trying to have the fallen branches removed.
Parts of the tree had fallen into the road and obscured the view of traffic for residents living on either side.
“I tried calling the municipality no less than 30 times to have the tree removed,” said Mr Petersen.
He added that a number of other trees in the area also needed to be pruned.
“Large trees are starting to damage electric fences,” he said.
On Tuesday morning last week, Mr Petersen contacted the NEWS again to report that municipal employees had arrived to cut back the fallen tree branches.
According to the marketing and communications department of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM), the first complaint was received on January 24.
“The complaint was booked to be attended to first thing on January 27, but unfortunately due to repairs on several of the vehicles, we were unable to respond immediately,” the department said.
“The entire Sixth Avenue was already book to be pruned on January 30 and January 31,” the department added.
The turnaround time for attending to fallen trees and branches should be immediate.
This is handled as an emergency complaint and should usually be completed within 24 hours.
“Complaints pertaining to the trimming of street trees should be responded to within a period of five to seven working days, based on our customer service standards policy,” the department said.
It added that the collection of branches should be dealt with within seven working days.
“We are currently incorporating preventative pruning, where possible, in areas where there are several complaints in the same street. In such cases, we prune all the trees in the street. We are also focusing much of our winter maintenance activities around street tree pruning in order to overcome this,” the department said.
“Street trees are evaluated on a regular basis and we are currently in the process of auditing council trees,” it added.
Residents can contact the parks department offices to log complaints on 011 999-3172 or e-mail complaints directly to the relevant supervisors, chief horticulturist sithembile.mbatha@ekurhuleni.gov.za or senior horticulturist victoria.ing@ekurhuleni.gov.za
“We apologise for any inconvenience that may have been experienced by residents. We are striving to improve the service delivery to the Edenvale community to the best of our ability,” the department said.
