Ward councillor joins hands with different entities to get issues resolved
Ward 71 councillor Rene Benjamin came together with different municipal entities to try and resolve some of the issues within the ward.
Different municipal entities banded together to fix issues in Ward 71.
Ward 71 councillor René Benjamin stated, “The purpose of the accelerated service delivery plan is to identify some of the pressing issues in the ward that just hasn’t gotten attention yet.”
She stated some of the issues to be tackled include the flooding in Princess, even though it is not necessarily in this ward, it has become a rather large concern. So has a pothole on the corner of Zwartland Street and Barthurst Avenue, which she explained is the biggest pothole in the ward. She also mentioned the weeds on Boydel Avenue are to be cut, as it has overgrown so far it is taking up part of the road, which is already a narrow street.
She explained they had a walkthrough with the entities during the week of August 1, in which they showed them the most urgent problem areas.
“We don’t have timelines as to when they will do it, but it’s also important to bring the entities to the ground. It’s one thing to tell you something looks bad, it’s another thing to show you how bad it is,” she said.
She continued to say in attendance were Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo and Rural Development officials, the ward committee member for environment issues, as well as Joburg Water and JMPD officials who made sure there was no conflict about the issues plaguing the ward. Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) workers were already on the ground fixing the road issues.
“The idea is to try and get the bigger things done. It is just a way of getting everybody together and to try and get something tackled. The department’s under a major strain. We are the second largest region in the city, so to try and get services for 18 wards, where there are a lot of similar issues, is very difficult. When we do this little exercise at least we know some of this stuff is getting attended to. JRA had indicated in our walkabout that a lot of the street issues are things that they’re aware of, especially the long-standing issues,” said Benjamin.
She concluded not all the problems will be resolved in a day and many issues will be tackled in the upcoming days, but the hope is to get at least some of the problems taken care of.
