Laws must be enforced

Doug Grewar, AbaQulusi Residents Association (ARA), Secretary, writes:- THE ARA demands that the AbaQulusi Local Municipality (ALM) enforces its own by-laws and the laws of the land. We have several vagrants and lunatics wandering the street, scaring women, stripping off their own clothes and sitting around naked, sleeping and kakking on the pavement. This is unacceptable! Several years ago one madman, with no provocation, attacked a businessman and smashed his head open with a steel pipe. Must we wait until they kill someone? They must be permanently removed! The ARA did raise some small funds to provide a Hobo’s Haven and these were given to the SAP. What have the ALM done? We have drunken hooligans driving their cars into Trim Park (and other parks) and having all night noisy parties that disturb rate paying residents. A concrete sleeper fence was erected but then due to objections from certain quarters it was removed. A palisade fence was promised but that will probably be stolen. The palisade fence around the Market Square Park is being vandalized and stolen right now without any reaction from the ALM. They seem to sit with their thumb up their bum and theirs mind in neutral. Rather than a fence at Trim Park the ALM must do their duty and ask the SAP to enforce the law and arrest the hooligans and impound their cars. That will soon sort them out. To their credit the ALM has taken some steps to remove hawkers who were illegally selling in the CBD. Hawkers are only allowed to operate east of the centre line of East Street. That is the law! Now we see them starting to push into the suburbs. This must be stopped. Then there are the car washers who are illegally operating in the Post Office car park, stealing water from the public toilets and destroying the tarmac surface with their waste water and the dirt that they wash off the cars. They also cause a disturbance to the library and the telephone exchange by their playing their customers’ car radios at full blast. The municipal police have done their best to order the car washers to keep quiet but the minute the police leave the radios are turned up full blast again. Nobody begrudges these people a chance to earn an honest living but they must be removed from the Post Office parking and relocated to the Mason Park area where proper facilities can be provided for them and they can be properly licenced and controlled. What the ARA demands is that law and order be enforced properly. Zero tolerance! We are now gatvol of this nonsense. Sekwanele! Be aware that if the law is not enforced people will be tempted to take the law into their own hands and chaos will ensue. It is in the ALM ‘s own own interests to avoid this by properly doing the job that they are so well overpaid to do.