Letter: reader disappointed by state of Kempton Park

Editor – It has been four if not more, sad years in Ekurhuleni.

Voting season is upon us.

Driving through Kempton Park, which was once a beautiful city, you can see it has suffered a silent death.

Political parties encourage residents to register and vote, but for what exactly are we voting? Are we voting for more crime and corruption?

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I have been a resident in CoE for 37 years, born and raised.

Driving home from work the other day the following thoughts came up.

• When a traffic light cannot be fixed, they erect a stop street. Or it becomes a four-way stop. Or when there is a traffic light it never works.

• The unfinished road works on multiple main roads and intersections in and around Kempton Park. Death traps are what I call them.

• When potholes are fixed, the debris and dirt are left for residents to remove.

• CoE reporting app does not work at all and complaints just get closed.

• Parkland Drive is falling apart with potholes.

• Traffic lights along the whole of the P91/Modderfontein Road towards Edenvale Hospital do not work.

• There is no communication whatsoever when there is maintenance work being conducted.

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• Zuurfontein Cemetery, well, recent articles should say enough about this.

• Overgrown grass everywhere.

• Streetlights all over have not worked since forever.

• The lack of traffic officers at busy intersections during load-shedding.

• The lack of general maintenance and upkeep of parks and gardens.

• Constant power and water outages.

• In the last year, our water and electricity bills just skyrocketed,

Are we voting for all the above to get worse and for our livelihood to suffer even more humiliation and belittlement?

And don’t get me started on the community groups or so-called community groups.

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If you don’t praise and worship the people in charge, you are surely not part of the ‘cool kids’ group.

I have been trying to understand the situation, sympathise and everything, but there has been no improvement whatsoever. I am just hearing the same line, by voting you will make a difference.

Explain to me what the difference is. Because nothing has improved in Kempton Park. We vote, we pay our rates and taxes, and there is no improvement at all.

I was engaged in a conversation the other day, whereby I was advised that I need to take into consideration who is in charge. I am well aware of who is in charge.

My point is, if our money (rates and taxes) was utilised in the correct manner, by general maintenance and upkeeping of infrastructure such as roads, traffic lights, streetlights, substations, water pipes and so on, there would not be explosions at substation once the power comes on after load-shedding.

This has nothing to do with Eskom because that is the blame for everything that goes wrong.

As a resident, our household has reached its breaking point. This is because of the increase in rates and taxes. We also sit with property valuations that to this day have not been resolved.

We have equipped our house not to be dependent on electricity, but with the rising costs of everything, we are at a point where it’s a monthly choice. Do we buy gas for the geyser or petrol for the generator or do we buy food?

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Posters all over the community to register and to vote. This is why the youth are not registering to vote and why some people are not even voting because they themselves have been let down by the people they voted for.

Vote for change they say. What change? There has been no change since the last election, as things have only deteriorated.

These are just my thoughts while sitting in traffic, trying to arrive alive at home, because of a traffic light not working on Zuurfontein Road.

Concerned resident