During a walkabout in Parkhurst, one of the suburbs plagued by dug-up pavements, the roads agency conceded that it could not account for all the open trenches.
Despite the roads agency’s claims that it was aware of who was accountable for the dug-up pavements in question, including two trenches on Jan Smuts Avenue, the area’s management team could not conclusively confirm who was responsible for the excavations.
However, the agency’s spokesperson Bertha Peters-Scheepers asserted that in most instances it was aware of who was responsible for the excavations, saying that the team did not have the information offhand and would need to refer to its files.
A wayleave, or permission given by the relevant authority to undertake excavation or construction work on its land, has to be granted. Frans Ledwaba, the agency’s wayleave assistant manager, said the challenge was monitoring all entities responsible for digging up the pavements.
He said those entities and contractors that were granted a wayleave, were monitored by the roads agency to ensure protocol was followed and the pavement was restored once the work was completed. Each excavation was dependent on the scope of work and the area should be demarcated.
“If protocol is not followed we have to stop them from continuing the project and penalise them,” Ledwaba said.
However, despite a list of entities that were granted wayleaves, which also stipulated the estimated timeframe for the work, he said others had been digging up the pavements without the roads agency’s permission.
“There are contractors and companies that try to do work without us knowing but when we pick up that we really hit them with a high penalty,” he said.
He said the agency also faced the challenge of thieves digging up areas to access underground cables. In some instances, he said, thieves would go to the extreme of donning uniforms so as not to raise suspicion.
The roads agency acknowledged that tighter monitoring was necessary. Peters-Scheepers said the agency remained reliant on the public to report these issues.
“If it is someone who has not gone through the proper channels of applying for a wayleave, we can then follow [up] and take the necessary action,” she said.
However, the roads agency had made progress repairing road surfaces and other infrastructure that the public had brought to its attention, it said. Peters-Scheepers noted that a lot of the poor conditions in Parkhurst and Greenside were the result of ageing infrastructure but this would be remedied because many of the roads in question were listed for resurfacing in the new financial year.
