UPDATE: Soutter Street still a thorn in the side for Moot residents
Soutter Street was placed under the spotlight at the beginning of this year when the street was blockaded by locals with rocks.
The situation in Soutter Street, west of the city, is still driving residents and nearby business owners up the wall.
This after a contractor appointed in February, dug up ditches to fix a sewage drain then left open, causing a headache for locals, said local business owner Fritz de Klerk.
“The two ditches are about seven metres deep,” De Klerk said.
“There are a lot of children walking along this street. Surely these ditches pose a danger to them. What if someone falls in?”
He said locals were “fed up” with the state of the street and are “planning to blockade the road again because they cannot take it anymore”.
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“I’m not sure if it will actually happen but it just shows how fed up the people are.”
De Klerk is the owner of Toypart on the corner of that road.
“This whole ordeal is starting to affect my business negatively,” he said. “Some of the ground dug up is right against my business, preventing my customers from parking.”
“The problem has been going on for almost a year.”
Community activist Eric Cordier said he was aware of the issue in Soutter Street.
“The other day there was another sewage leak, which I reported to the metro,” he said.
Soutter Street has been an issue “for years”, he said.
“I used to live in the street years ago. The situation is only getting worse and worse.”
Soutter Street came under the spotlight at the beginning of this year when locals blockaded it with rocks in frustration.
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Despite several attempts by the metro to clean up this street, the angry protesters kept on blockading it to pressure the metro to close up a manhole it dug up and left open since November last year.
“Since then, raw sewage has been flowing down the road, affecting many in the area,” De Klerk said.
Locals started the blockade in January after a man badly injured himself when he fell into the hole.
The Tshwane metro could not comment at the time of going to print.
However, it had previously said it was determined to repair the old drainage system that was causing the leaks.
He said the sewers in Pretoria West were installed in 1934, in a confined working space, and it was likely that the system had collapsed.
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