DEAR Editor,-
My wife and I have been on the receiving end of such unfair treatment from the Hibiscus Coast Municipality over many years, in fact for 11 years now. With disgust, I read a recent article about how the municipality was congratulating itself on its own performance, while we sit with a major problem for years and they completely ignore us.
We own two plots in Ramsgate (1029 and 1035) and the problem is that access to these plots was cut off when the highway was built. Over the years, we have written countless letters, had many meetings and made numerous phone calls to the municipality to either provide access to these plots or to pay out the value of the properties to us. No one in the municipality wants to take responsibility for this issue and we get shoved from pillar to post. Many years ago we requested that they put a hold on our accounts until this problem was sorted out, but every now and then we receive a final demand and threats if we do not pay the accounts.
Then we start the process all over again, getting all the information together and writing emails to new people in charge, requesting them to sort it out. This takes many hours of our time and our frustration mounts trying to get someone to listen to us to solve the problem. Every time the issue is passed to another person and we are back to square one with a deathly silence until they send final demands again.
At one stage, Gert Brits (from the municipality) recommended that we be paid out, since building a road and a bridge to gain access would cost about R2m. When he left the municipality, the whole thing fizzled out and we had to start from scratch again.
We have written letters to DA representative George Henderson and actually had a meeting with him at the plot sites to show him the problem, but nothing came of his promises to look into it and resolve it.
I also sent many letters to Doug Sparks from the Ramsgate Ratepayers’ Association, to no avail. The last two letters I wrote were to revenue manager Kate Mardon and municipal manager Max Mbili. These letters were also forwarded to George Henderson and some of them to Doug Sparks. I have volumes of correspondence that date back 11 years as proof of the unfairness of the situation we find ourselves in.
LES SPARKS
* Editor’s note: No response has been received from HCM at the time of printing.
