A MEDICAL facility being erected on Dirk Smit Crescent, Meyersdal, is causing some residents aggravation.
The three story high, 1 500m2 medical offices are being built at an alarming speed, smack bang in the middle of a residential area and according to residents, they were not consulted.
“We never received any form of notice or warning, now there is this monstrous building going up so quickly and it’s completely taken away my view. I will now be forced to look at this thing forever and the property will be devalued,” said a resident who would like to remain anonymous.
Themba Gadebe, spokesperson for the City of Ekurhuleni, however, said that all proper procedures were followed.
“In November 2012 an application was received for the rezoning of erven 1525 and 1526 (now erf 2418) from ‘Residential one’ to ‘Institutional’ for purposes of a medical clinic, limited to two storeys and a maximum floor area of 633m2.
On October 12, 2015, another application was received in respect of this property to increase the height from two to three storeys and to increase the floor area to 770m2,” said Gadebe.
“Both applications were advertised in the Citizen, Beeld and Provincial Gazette and a site notice displayed and in 28 days, no objections were received. The final application was thus approved on November 8, 2016,” added Gadebe.
A further complaint from a resident was the concern about how the medical waste will be disposed of and whether it may pose a health risk to residents, being in such close proximity.
“Why did they not post the notices in the local newspaper or approach us directly, surely that is obvious unless they just wanted to sneak it through and there were virtually no residents living here back then anyway. This is quite a new development and people are still building houses, etc,” was one of the retorts.
Another resident stated that she called the number on one of the notices to state rezoning was taking place and the man who answered told her it was too late to put in a complaint. “The notice was in Phillip Engelbrecht Street, not even Dirk Smit Crescent and they only rezoned the one side of the two properties they combined, so isn’t that then illegal?” she asked.
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