NIGHT TIME roadworks on a section of South Ridge Road has Maze Road residents wondering why work is being done at night when they are trying to sleep.
According to Beverley Ford, on 17 July the eThekwini Municipality Metro Water Services commenced work on a leaking water pipeline in South Ridge Road.
“This particular section of the road has been dug up, closed and dug up so many times I have lost track. At 2.30am on 18 July, the noise of the roadworks and construction workers shouting at the top of their voices became so unbearable that I had to go out into the road at to speak to the person in charge and make him aware of the unacceptable noise. The person I spoke to was of the view that if I wanted water I would have to put up with the noise. In fact, after complaining to him the noise became even louder and I believe this was done on purpose just to irritate me further. I was suffering from such extreme fatigue on the Monday morning that I was forced to work half-day so that I could go home to get some sleep,” she said.
Ford said on Saturday 2 August at 10am the workers were back again in the same spot digging up the road.
“I went and spoke to the supervisor at the site who said the job was not done properly on 17 July and they were now back to finish the job off properly. The construction work went on through Saturday night until 4.30am on Sunday. Suffice to say my husband and I had no sleep as the level of noise was again unbearable. I even had to phone Metro Police to get them to ask the construction workers to stop shouting, but Metro Police were of no help at all as they were of the opinion that the Municipality were just doing their job,” she said.
Ford said she had emailed the municipality twice to make them aware of the situation and to date they had not been able to advise her why this section of the road was always being dug up and why the work had to take place in the early hours of the morning when residents were trying to sleep.
“The wastage of water, time and ratepayers money due to the poor quality of work being carried out in Durban on a daily basis is totally unacceptable and a disgrace,” she said.
Aaron Mfunda, deputy head of water and sanitation, said the department had its respective teams work in the area referred to and some multiple tasks were performed.
“The section the consumer talks about was dug up by our electricity department to lay new cables, and during the laying of the electricity cables they identified a leak on one of the trunk mains. On 17 July our water operations team excavated and carried out a temporary repair to the pipe which was done at night and during this temporary repair it was realised or noticed that one of the valves was not shutting entirely. We could not detect this earlier as we are working on a live system,” he said.
He said a further shutdown had to be carried out on the night of 2 August, when the teams shut off both outlets to South Ridge Reservoir.
“We chose to carry out a night shut so as to ensure bare minimum inconvenience to our consumers and also especially considering that even schools are closed during that time. We then had to replace the valve with a new one and carry out the permanent repair and as a result TLBs, angle grinders, generators, and water pumps had to be used for this operation and this was unavoidable. The staff had to communicate over the noise of the machinery in order to ensure an efficient shutdown had taken place,” said Mfunda.
He said on behalf of the water and sanitation unit he sincerely apologised for any inconvenience that this may have caused but this was necessary and if this was not resolved, the greater part of Glenwood, Morningside and parts of Umbilo would have been without water for days.
“I do take cognisance of the consumer's comments and I have spoken to our operations teams to keep the noise levels down to a minimum even more in future should a situation of this nature has to be carried out,” he said.
