Lack of reinstatement a rife problem
BRYANSTON - At any given time there are half a dozen repair jobs waiting for reinstatement in Ward 103, according to ward councillor Vincent Earp.
Such work is supposed to be logged and completed automatically, yet residents often wait for weeks for the job to be completed, reporting the problem over and over.
This reporter travelled with Earp around a small area in Bryanston and examined four sites where entities have made repairs, but subcontractors tasked with reinstating and cleaning up have yet to show. Three of those problems were pipe bursts where Joburg Water had repaired the pipe and left the hole unattended. The fourth was a heap of tar left after a section of road was resurfaced.
The most serious case was off The River Road, near the Riverside shopping centre. Earp said two weeks earlier there had been a major pipe burst at the site. Two holes were dug to make the necessary repairs and both holes remained. The deepest was roughly six or seven feet deep with a high mound of soil next to it. Earp said, “There’s no chance that a child could climb out of that if they fell in, and its dangerous because of this high wall of soil. If it collapsed when someone was in the hole they’d be a gonner.”
He added, “This is a major service delivery problem. Its not just the repair that takes ages, it can take weeks for the reinstatement to happen. Some residents are affected directly, such as if the hole is across someone’s driveway.”
At another location nearby, that was indeed the case. Resident Graham Speller had a burst pipe at the corner of his driveway about five weeks prior. He said, “I last spoke to Joburg Water over two days ago when they gave me a new reference number. I must have spoken to them two or three times since the repair was done, and each time they said it was a different team that had to do the reinstatement and it would take four or five days.”
He said in the most recent conversation he was told that because the curb was damaged another team would need to be sent out from a different department, while another team would have to fix the tar and another would replace the bricks. He was then told that repairs would begin within 48 hours.
The Sandton Chronicle will publish the city council’s response on the matter when it becomes available.
