ROAD users will finally be out of the dark soon as government has committed to repair the lights on Atlas Road.
Six years later, the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport has agreed to enter into a service level agreement with Ekurhuleni Municipality to ensure that the lights on Atlas Road in Bonaero Park are finally fixed.
“In a written response to a DA question, repairs to the lights along Atlas Road will only commence after the service level agreement is in place. This is expected to be concluded by the end of November,” Graham Gersbach, MPL and DA spokesman on roads, said in a statement.
The lights on Atlas Road have not been working for the past six years mostly due to cable theft. The area had also become a crime hot spot as a result of the street lights not working, with high rates of hijackings and smash and grab incidents.
According to Gersbach, 70 cases relating to motor vehicle crimes have been opened at Kempton Park SAPS in the past three years. As a result, four police officers have been deployed daily to the area to ensure the safety of motorists.
Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane, MEC for Community Safety, said she was aware of the dangers posed by the outages and her department had taken this up with the roads department several times.
“Six years and numerous incidents of crime later, it is an indictment on the Department of Roads and Transport’s ability to carry out its mandate. The department needs to take proactive steps to carry out preventative maintenance and minimise losses resulting from vandalism, by encasing cables in concrete and securing sub-stations and other equipment in metal cages – similar to SANRAL’s security measures along the R21.”
During a sitting on September 30, MEC for Roads and Transport, Ismail Vadi, responding to questions posed by Gersbach regarding the repairs, admitted the lights hadn’t been fixed due to parts not being available.
The DA said it would request a copy of the service level agreement once it is complete, as well as a project plan with timelines, detailing the monitoring and maintenance responsibilities.
