EDITOR – Arising out of the article that you published last week on the abandoned houses on the Berea that are a health hazard, it is interesting to note that the letter from Save Our Berea to the municipality got no reply or even an acknowledgement.
We followed it up with the relevant person, Vasie Pillay, eight days later and got a terse reply, “We are dealing with the health issues.” These houses have been in this state for over two years.
We immediately replied, that we found their email response to our complaint to be inadequate and unacceptable. We asked, “What specifically are you doing about our complaint?”
Since then the buildings have been featured on Sunday’s Carte Blanche program entitled ‘Heritage to Decay’.
This is why Save Our Berea is asking your readers to stand up and show the municipality that enough is enough. We are ratepayers and we pay the salaries of the councillors and the City officials and we deserve and demand better service.
This cavalier approach by our civil servants is a direct result of cadre deployment on party political lines rather than competency. These officials need to get the message that they answer to us, as they should in a constitutional democracy, and not to their party political masters.
Kevin Dunkley
Cheryl Johnson
Save Our Berea
