Residents paint speed bump after waiting 7 months for municipality to respond to their request
The elderly man repainted the lines on the speed bump himself after growing tired of waiting for the Joburg Roads Agency to respond to his request.
An 81-year-old man repainted lines on a speed bump after he and his wife grew tired of endlessly reporting issues to the Joburg Roads Agency and not seeing action.
Sid and Beryl Kolman had reported the faded lines on the Mackay Avenue speed bump to the agency in June last year, along with potholes, other poorly marked speed bumps, overgrown pavements and other issues on Gordon Road, as well as Sue, Pekin and Susman avenues.
In fact, Beryl reported issues as far as Hyde Park and received reference numbers for them all.
But after waiting seven months and there being no action, Beryl tried to report the same issues to joburgconnect@joburg.org.za instead of the agency’s usual email address, hotline@jra.org.za.
But the municipality did not even reply to her email to tell her the mistake, let alone follow up on the matters.
“The lines on the one bump were hardly visible and you could only see it when it’s night-time because there are reflector signs next to it,” Sid complained.
“So I decided to stop waiting and bought paint and painted over the lines myself.”
Beryl commented she wished the municipality was as well-run as Cape Town’s, where she said every speed bump is painted well and every street has a sign with its name on it.
Roads agency spokesperson Kelebogile Mafa said the agency does not have access to the joburgconnect@joburg.org.za as it is used as the City of Johannesburg’s logging mail, not the agency.
With regard to the numerous issues the Kolmans have reported correctly since June last year, Mafa said she would follow up with the agency’s customer relationship management unit about their statuses and revert to the Randburg Sun.
Ward 99 councillor, Nicole van Dyk complained that even though residents do everything right when reporting matters, often no help comes.
“Residents are getting reference numbers from the entity,” she said.
“[But action] almost does not happen without senior political intervention.”
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