Absence of proper lighting takes toll on rugby players

There appears to be no clear solution to address the longstanding vandalism of power infrastructure at the city’s Reiger Park Sports Arena and Boksburg PG Park.
These public facilities have been for a long time left with poor lighting as a result of cable theft, vandalism and illegal connections.

Responding to the Boksburg Advertiser’s request for comment on the issues, the city’s energy department said it has tried at least three times to improve lighting at the facilities in question, but vandals continued to attack the infrastructure leading to the current situation.

According to metro spokesperson Zweli Dlamini, the repeated attempts to repair the damaged infrastructure to keep the stadium lights shining became a fruitless and wasteful exercise.

“The city even went to the extent of relocating the electricity distribution board into the civic centre, but not even this could help as the community gained access to the facility and vandalised it – thus affecting the power supply to the facility. To make matters worse, even our crews were threatened,” said Dlamini.

“The city will be embarking on a public relations exercise designed to discourage the public from vandalising municipal property as such behaviour affects innocent lives.
“We are not only dealing with the vandalism of this particular facilities but broad vandalism, including traffic lights, manhole covers, water infrastructure, road signs, theft of electrical cables and gear, and many more. Together, we can defeat the scourge of vandalism – but only if we work together.

Poor lighting creates problems for rugby clubs
In a recent interview with this publication, the chairperson of East Rand Rugby United (ERU), Marius de Vos and the Boksburg Rugby Club chairperson Rinus van der Linde, lamented the poor lighting at their facilities had left clubs in a serious predicament, which is harming the development of club rugby.

There were times when ERU players had to use car lights to light up the Reiger Park Sports Arena.

De Vos bemoaned the department’s failure to achieve workable strategies to protect the facilities against vandals and cable thieves.
“The facility we are using is continuously targeted by vandals. Only about half the floodlights are functioning, and this undoubtedly set back our team’s progress.

“We could have performed much better in our past games if we had lights, but this situation had a negative impact on our performance so far.
“But, regardless, we are thriving and will not allow such challenges to hold the area back from producing fantastic rugby players.

Meanwhile, Van der Linde, recently told the Boksburg Advertiser that a lot of players have left the club because of the lighting issue.
“Our club and ERU are definitely in jeopardy because of the issues we face with power. Our training sessions happen after hours when coaches are available Yet we cannot train after 18:00 as we’ve got no lights,” said van der Linde.

“The A-field, which we use for our training, has no lights and two towers work on the B field with only half the lamps functioning. We have to share one pitch (B field) with three other teams for practice. There is just not enough space for everyone.”

The clubs have requested the metro to get the problems permanently addressed, but they feel that there is no commitment from the facility manager to show the issue of lighting will be addressed.

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