Issues at Stake: Neighbours from hell

The Courier recently posted a question online, asking readers to what level they experience disturbances in their neighbourhoods, such as loud parties or other forms of noise.

Judging by the significant response from the public, this seems to be a major issue with little recourse for relief by the sufferers of such unruly behaviour.

Some choice comments:

“That’s normal in the hood …loud music, gunshots, cars, women screaming.”

“Salt Rock outside the library is chaos with loud music from cars, women shouting and screaming… it carries on until late and every weekend I have to risk it to go ask them to keep the noise down… usually ending up in some form of verbal abuse.”

“The infamous church in the Foxhill area. Banging their drums and scream singing to all hours on the weekend.”

“Residents or visitors using the streets as a race track.”.

“Dogs barking and wining into the early hours of the morning, as well as loud party music. This gets a bit too much too handle after 3am in the morning.

“Loud club music from restaurant across the road the whole Sunday afternoon from 12pm to 6pm. People shouting and screaming. It is unbearable.”

“A builder who is renovating a neighbour’s property (working after hours and on Sundays), with no care or interest in the municipal by-laws.”

Non-stop rowdy parties at Airbnb and other holiday accommodation units are another source of severe annoyance.

The infuriating thing is that nobody in authority cares – unless the neighbours from hell move in next door to them, of course.

The municipal by-laws meant to ensure citizens a peaceful, noise-free environment are just useless written intentions on paper it seems.

Calling the police or municipal “control room” to address such unruly behaviour comes to naught.

Residents are simply left on their own. The options are to suffer in silence, sell up and move out after years of noise abuse, or confront the troglodytes.

But why should they?

It is a basic right to live in peace, and having invested a lot of money in their homes, why should they be subjected to endless torment when cave dwellers set up camp next door.

Requesting drunken louts bellowing inanities into the night and cranking up the endless thumping music to tone it down, takes courage. And mostly it won’t have a positive outcome.

If anything, the ruckus will deliberately be shifted into higher gear out of spite for the audacity of challenging them. You simply can’t reason with the intellectually stunted.

By-laws are there for a reason, and the authorities owe it to law-abiding citizens to step up and begin to apply the laws to protect them from behaviour they are not themselves allowed to control – such as shooting out the neighbours’ windows.

On a lighter note, I will soon open a clairvoyant booth in one of the malls to help you see the future.

My credentials you may ask?

Writing about the upcoming elections some months ago, I listed among many others, the following I saw in my crystal ball.

“In the run-up to voting day, I’m confident loadshedding will somehow be sorted out. The ruling party will have to find ways and means of keeping the lights on… Every day in the dark sheds some votes. How they will achieve this, remains to be seen though, since hooking up cables to Zim’s grid is not a feasible option…”

I rest my case.

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