Business owners in the Boksburg CBD are pleading with the City of Ekurhuleni to remove illegal structures that vagrants have built near their businesses.
A man who owns a business on Market Street, who asked to remain anonymous, said the shacks are extensively affecting local businesses.
“They erected a shack opposite our business in the parking lot on Montagu Street and the other shack is on Station Road.
“Our customers are now afraid to park their cars near our businesses, because someone might rob them. We are suspicious of the vagrants living in these shacks. The illegal structures are compromising the safety of school learners because they normally use the street where the shacks are.”
He said the EMPD has demolished the structures and removed the occupants in the past, but they came back and re-erected the shacks.
The spokesperson for the City of Ekurhuleni, Zweli Dlamini, said the metro cannot allow a situation where people are illegally occupying land and buildings.
“This is tantamount to land invasion. There are laws in the city that must be respected. We will deal with such acts of lawlessness,” said Dlamini.
Ward 32 Clr Marius de Vos said there is an unprecedented influx of homeless people in the CBD, looking for food and shelter, and the erection of illegal structures is a result of it.
“They erect shacks on open public spaces and sometimes on the doorsteps of businesses, which poses safety risks for business owners and customers. The EMPD assured me they would remove these shacks as soon as possible.”
De Vos urged business owners and ratepayers to report illegal informal structures.
“It goes without saying that some of these people are fiddling with municipal infrastructure daily, such as vandalising electrical boxes and streetlights to get copper wires to sell to unlicensed scrap yards,” he said.
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