Endicott residents have expressed frustration over deteriorating infrastructure and poor service delivery, which they say have steadily worsened over the years and are now affecting their livelihoods.

Resident Andre Strauss said that, in his 35 years living in Endicott, the condition of the paved roads has worsened, making it difficult, and in some cases impossible, to travel through the area.

Strauss is also a Springs CPF deputy chairperson. He explained how the condition of the road makes it difficult to respond to crime.

“For a normal motor vehicle, it is impossible to drive through here; even a 4×4 vehicle cannot go through. A police van got stuck recently.

“Our block patrollers refuse to patrol, because most of them have motor vehicles and they can hardly drive, especially at night,” he said.

Strauss said their main concern is that criminals have taken advantage of poor road conditions to plan escape routes and evade law enforcement during criminal activities.

“The grass on the side of the road is about 2m long and the criminals can just run there and it’s hard to find them. There was a break-in near the railway line.

“We couldn’t reach the crime scene from one direction; we had to divert and ride around the block to get there, and we wasted about 10 minutes of response time when we could have caught the perpetrators on scene,” Strauss said.

Another resident and deputy chairperson of the CPF’s Sector Seven (rural), Estelle Riekert, said emergency services often struggle to reach the area, forcing residents to transport patients to locations where ambulances can reach them.

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“We have got problems with power outages, water – nothing gets maintained,” she said.

She explained that power outages, combined with road conditions, pose a challenge for people who work remotely.

“We would like the municipality to do what they are getting paid to do. Every time we go to the meetings, there is no way forward,” Riekert said.

This publication sent an enquiry to Lesedi Local Municipality on January 29, and no response was received at the time of publication.