Community offers to aid municipality with road repair
A number of farmers and community members have reached out to the City of Mbombela (CoM) in the hopes of assisting it with the repairs of the roads in and around Hazyview.
A meeting with the municipality was held in town on January 21 where the members of the FF Plus and Agri Mpumalanga represented the interests of the community regarding the necessity for road repair.
Some locals have acted numerous times before, fixing the roads themselves, but cannot continue to patch them at their own cost, nor wait for CoM to react. Cllr Ken Robertson and the provincial leader of the FF Plus, Werner Weber, in conjunction with Robert Davel of Agri Mpumalanga, met with the MEC for the Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport, Mohita Latchminarain, to discuss the crucial need of repairing the roads around Kiepersol and Hazyview.
The purpose of the meeting was to inform the MEC that the community and farmers were ready to assist the municipality with the repairs and to initiate a link where civilian and government can benefit from each other’s aid.
According to Robertson, the municipality can give the farmers a mandate to repair certain roads as many would have been inaccessible without their intervention.
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Improved communication between provincial and municipal entities to maintain various sections of road, was requested along with larger budgets for repairs and improved maintenance. Better signage where potholes are prevalent have also been requested since not all the potholes can be repaired simultaneously.
Latchminarain promised to prioritise the main tourism routes around Hazyview and the D514 in Kiepersol. “There is a serious awareness campaign taking place to show how determined we are to do the work. We hope that either the mentioned routes get repaired, or that the state, with our input, comes up with a plan to compensate farmers for their ongoing assistance to the state,” said Robertson.
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