Bakerton cemetery headaches

DA Councillor Ramesh Sheodin visited the site last week and said he has sent many e-mails to the cemetery manager concerning the issue of the precast walls falling down in many places.

The new Customer Care Centre manager Ace Phiri accompanied Sheodin on an inspection of the cemetery and he promised the residents that the much needed maintenance work will be done soon.

“The metro is aware of the falling walls due to vandalism and adverse conditions at the cemetery. Plans to fix the fence at the cemetery are still in place – there are funds to do this and requests for fencing were been sent to the Real Estate Department in August,” says spokesman Sam Modiba.

This precast walling was installed at Sheodin’s request in 1997 during his tenure as ward councillor.

“Over the years the foundations have shifted in a few places and vandalism is also a serious issue,” says Sheodin.

Resident Naresh Dayabhai, in conjunction with many residents, says the cemetery is a sacred place to all and the wall, illegal dumping of refuse and building materials is an ugly sight.

Modiba says the cemetery is on the priority list to be one of the first facilities to be fixed.

“A priority list has been resent for transfer of funds to top up the security vote number in order to allocate security personnel to the cemetery and we are now awaiting the response from budget adjustment,” adds Modiba.

The trees have been a great concern to the residents for a very long time as the they feel the trees are very old and may fall over and cause more damage to the existing precast as well as to the graves, especially in the Hindu area of the cemetery, which is directly next to the trees.

According to Modiba the plan with regard to the trees is to deal with it in different phases due to the number of trees and the ages of these trees.

He adds currently there is an EPWP bid that the parks department is working on, this is expected to be awarded around March 2014.

“This bid will be on a fixed term basis and tree maintenance is one of the items on the scope of work for the contractor. Other items on the bid specifications are grass cutting and herbicide control,” concludes Modiba.

“The residents are very grateful to the metro for their new plan and also for the recently installed highmast light at the cemetery,” says Sheodin.