A healthy ward needs residents’ participation

Ward 104 councillor Emi Koekemoer spoke about challenges impacting areas within her ward, specifically items of concern to residents.

Although Grosvenor Road is littered with potholes, Koekemoer indicated that there were more pressing issues to deal with.

“Bryanston road conditions are not too bad compared to other areas,” Koekemoer assessed. “But outstanding Joburg Water and City Power reinstatements are becoming an issue, also, Armco barriers need replacement and there is a need, for more traffic and speed control measures.”

Parts of Bryanston fall into Ward 104 and water outages, trips after load-shedding, extended outages, overgrown verges, substation security, by-law infringements, and new developments are all some of the concerns pointed out by Koekemoer.

“When Bryanston tower loadsheds, Bryanston is without water for extended periods. Our hotspots for water bursts include Grosvenor, Highlands, Roux, Hugo, and Cumberland.”

On a positive note, Eskom announced the handing over of load-shedding operations to City Power on November 6. This move follows an agreement between the two power utilities towards reducing the length of load-shedding in parts of Northern Johannesburg – even during stage 5 load-shedding.

Koekemoer welcomed the solution as a positive step forward for customers.

“It means when there are extended outages, the substation can be reprieved from load-shedding to allow technicians to work on the fault. It also means after extended outages, we can request for a reprieve from load-shedding directly from City Power without all the red tape.”

Koekemoer advised residents in her ward to ‘look and log’ and to participate in the processes which determine the state of the ward.

“I cannot stress this enough; if you do not tell the city there is a problem they do not know. Get involved, and be kind to your neighbours. We are all in this together.”

Related Article: Voters asked if they believe a ward councillor has the power to effect change