Time might be running out for Blyvooruitzicht village as the town’s temporary new owners seem to have run out of patience. On Tuesday, Blyvoor’s provisional liquidator, Mr Leigh Roering, told the Herald that the company Double D & G Building Contractors CC, which has been running Blyvoor town for the past year, has decided that it does not want to be involved in the town’s future anymore. “There is no obvious solution to Blyvoor’s problems and the purchasing of the village is not going to happen anymore,” Roering told the Herald. According to him, those involved in the town were busy drawing up a letter to the MEC (member of the executive committee) of the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements and Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Mr Jacob Mamabolo on Wednesday. In this letter, the MEC will be asked to assist so that the government can take over Blyvoor within the next 90 days. “We will present a detailed breakdown of why urgent government intervention is needed in Blyvoor. It’s not the job of a liquidator to develop a socio-economic survival plan for a village such as Blyvoor,” he said. According to him, much of the trouble at Blyvoor stems from the fact that government failed to support those in control of the town when they wanted to, amongst other things, have it proclaimed as a town. They also asked that some of Blyvoor’s services, such as its sewerage system, would be linked to that of Carletonville. As far as could be determined, the Merafong City Local Municipality did, at one stage, agree that this could be done, but later said it did not have the capacity to do so. In the meantime, the owners of Blyvoor were still struggling to pay the former mining town’s astronomical outstanding debt on its water accounts. Residents recently had to cope without water for more than a month after the Merafong City Local Municipality instructed Rand Water to cut Blyvoor’s water, due to non-payment. The water supply was temporarily restored in June, after Mamabolo and human rights groups intervened.
According to Roering, Blyvoor will soon be facing water and electricity cuts and severe sewage problems if the Government does not intervene. “If neither the Government nor a private type enterprise person intervenes, Blyvoor might just turn into trash,” Roering concluded
