Glenwood UIP gets off the ground

THE much-awaited Glenwood Urban Improvement Precinct (UIP) is slowly making progress.

Speaking to Berea Mail on Tuesday, Neil Lamble, a UIP director, said it had been a long process and although it was still ‘early days’ and the UIP was not yet near maintenance mode, they were gradually winding into gear to move forward.

Lamble said the application for the UIP was submitted to the eThekwini Municipality last September. The UIP was officially established in July this year, but that they couldn’t move forward without the necessary funding. Lamble said after the first payment from the municipality had been received at the end of August, the team had made positive moves to drive the process forward.

“We previously had four founding directors, and decided that as the UIP would serve a much larger area than just Bulwer, we had to cast the net out to bring in a few additional members from other areas. Patrice Masson from Max Prop/Glenwood Village Market, Anthony Moodley from Unicopy and steering committee member Henry Masinga were brought on board and they have contributed significantly to the progress already,” he said.

Lamble said the UIP had a few big decisions to make regards staffing, and a process was followed to get in applications for a precinct manager. He said this was a rigorous process and the board felt fortunate to have Dhevan Chintha, a former Lt Col in the SAPS who worked in various departments, apply for the position. Lamble said they were confident he was the right man for the job and that he had implemented a similar process in his community of Shallcross. Kerry Brissett, who was instrumental in signing businesses in the area to the UIP, had shown her mettle when it came to the admin side of things, and has been appointed as the assistant precinct manager.

ALSO READ: Final steps taken to establish UIP

“As none of us are experts in UIPs, we have partnered with Urban Management, which manages other local UIPs and has a lot of expertise in this area. We are also working on implementing software called Incident Desk which will be used to log issues in the precinct. Another step was to partner with a security company, and Ensure Security has been signed on and will provide the UIP with three levels of security, from armed response, providing quality security officers, and will manage the Ambassadors on the ground, with the team falling under the company. We have also secured temporary premises at Glenwood Village,” he said.

Lamble said the key thing at the moment was to get an 0861 number, which the UIP had applied for. This will be a hotline, and a point of contact between the community and the UIP. The number will be for emergencies and for logging complaints, and will be manned by Ensure Security 24/7.

“We are feeling very positive. It is a work in progress and our short to medium term goal is to be compliant with the municipal policy, and on the operations side, to try focus resources around a few key areas such as the three shopping centres, the restaurant area in Helen Joseph Road and a node in Alan Paton Road. We aim to get these areas a lot cleaner and safer by the end of the year,” he said.

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