Club offers to take over unsightly park

THE Durban Bowling Club has offered to take over the park adjacent to its premises and is waiting on a response from the city.

According to chairman, Peter Jackson, the park, which sometimes has up to 200 vagrants sleeping in it, has been a lot quieter recently with the help of Metro Police, however he feels the security aspect is still an issue.

“The trees in the park are damaged from the men burning copper wire at their bases. Sometimes we can smell the stink of burning plastic when we are playing bowls. There used to be swings in the park, but these have been broken and sold for scrap. The men also jump over the wall into the club to defecate, and have broken the fence in order to get into the grounds to sleep. One they're in our property the police cannot spot them. We have found their beds and other items, along with rubbish on our property, and things are hidden in the trees. We had to put up electric fencing on our roof, as the men were climbing onto the pavilion and sleeping on the flat part of the roof. About five years ago a man was shot and we found him dead on the property. We also used to find bags stashed on the property from muggings,” he said.

Jackson said around four years ago a municipal supervisor who was working in the park spoke to the club about taking over the land.

“Nothing happened after that. I tried to contact the head of parks, but had no joy. We would like to take over the park for security purposes, although we don't really need it. The only issue is we are on a month to month lease, and the municipality have said the club would need to fence it as the municipality has no budget for this. This doesn't make sense as they spent R60 000 a month for four security guards to stay in the park recently. We would need to have a secure lease before we can commit to spending money on fencing,” he said.

He said ward councillor Martin Meyer had been pushing for the club to get a longer lease and had been putting pressure on the police to clean up the park.

Meyer said Metro Police had cleared out the park three times in two weeks.

“When I was there last week it looked better. I'm saddened but not surprised that it has deteriorated again. Parks is happy to give management of the park to the club, however the problem lies that the club doesn't want to invest in fencing while they are on a month to month lease. The decision on long term leases now lies with the city manager who has so far not responded to my queries,” he said.