GMM leave messy sites behind
For months, no attempt has been made to clean up or fix the pavement and road that was dug up by GMM when a cable was repaired along Jan Smuts Street and Helen Joseph Drive.
An eye sore and tripping hazard still lies on the pavement at Davies Court, corner of Jan Smuts Street and Helen Joseph Drive.
More than three months have lapsed since Govan Mbeki Municipality (GMM) fixed a cable fault that left residents and businesses in the dark for days and in some areas for weeks.
The GMM has not attempted to clean up or repave the sidewalk on Jan Smuts Street.
The concern is that elderly residents, some of whom use walking aids or wheelchairs, use the pavement to the pedestrian crossing to cross the road to the Senecta shopping centre.
“We struggle to get across. A resident placed concrete blocks so we could cross the road to the shops. It is a mess, I tell you,” said a resident.
They also dug up a part of the road when excavation began at the four-way crossing of Helen Joseph Drive and Jan Smuts Street.
The rubble is still on the side of the pavement, while they placed sand in the hole made in the road.
Upon further inspection, the Ridge Times saw a residential driveway where they removed bricks. All the bricks lay to the side where municipal workers repaired an electric box.
The GMM team did not return to lay the cables in the ground and fix the pavement.
“I can not fix my pavement until the cable is fixed. It is pointless repairing a pavement only for the GMM to come back and dig it up again,” said the resident.
The residents were under the impression, by what municipal workers had said, that the residents had to restore the paving and that it was not GMM’s responsibility.
“They told me the exposed cables are temporary, but it has almost been a year, and still nothing has happened,” said the resident.
The Ridge Times headed into Trichardt, and once again, the sight of open drains and heaps of sand after repairing water leaks are telltale signs of municipal work done but never restored to the way it was.
A local businessman, who wished not to be named, told of repairs to a cable fault done by GMM.
“Besides the delay in digging and hitting a sewerage line, when all was fixed and the time came to close the holes, they did a job with minimal effort and sloppy work.
“They told me the paving, which is on the municipal boundary line, was my responsibility to fix because the GMM are not pavers,” said the businessman.
He said the shoddy cover-up and sunken pavement left him no alternative but to get professionals to repave the areas GMM messed up.
In response to the media enquiry on who is responsible for fixing the damages to municipal boundary lines; when GMM will begin to clean up; why the GMM workers left sites the way they are; and if GMM is proud of the state they leave work sites Donald Green, head of communications for GMM said, “We brought the matter to the attention of the relevant department.
“The GMM apologises to the affected communities for the delays in rehabilitating several of these sites due to a shortage of material and staff.
“The road in question, was dug to repair an underground cable,” concluded Green.
