Community member fixes up a notorious pothole
DOUGLASDALE – After one pothole was complained about by a customer, dealer principal decided to take matters in his own hands to repair the pothole with the dealership’s cleaning company.
A problem pothole located on Douglas Drive in Douglasdale was filled on 29 March thanks to the assistance of a local dealership.
Dealer principal at Lindsay Saker in Fourways, Bruce van Rooyen had a customer complain of two potholes located outside of the dealership that had almost damaged a wheel on her car.
“I reported the potholes on Twitter and received a reference number. After a month, the pothole was obviously not repaired so I went back onto Twitter to request any updates on the pothole. I was referred to someone who I emailed. To this day, I am still waiting for a response from him.”
It was then Van Rooyen took it upon himself to contact the outsourced cleaning company, LT Hygiene Services at the dealership where one of the employees bought asphalt mix from a hardware store.
“Our first attempt in fixing potholes was the two outside the premises, and they have held up very well since we have a lot of traffic passing through here. We just felt it was the right thing to do,” he said.
On 25 March, Van Rooyen discovered a post by the Douglasdale Community Policing Forum alerting the public about a pothole on Douglas Drive.
“I had reached out to them asking if anyone has offered to fix it yet, then went with the CPF the next day to look at it. It was quite a serious pothole to fix as it took 25kgs of asphalt.
“I think it’s a good thing to get businesses involved in helping the community. Hopefully, a small thing like this goes a long way.”
The fixed pothole had sunk in a little almost two days after repair, but has since been topped up and it still set in place.
Justine Louw, deputy secretary of Douglasdale CPF Sector 1 said, “[The pothole] was creating a dangerous situation for the public. So we are trying to create public awareness of potential dangerous situations in our neighbourhood.
“Going forward we will be doing more of these awareness reports and hopefully, the public will start putting more pressure on the respective institutions responsible that is currently failing all of our taxpayers.”
The Fourways Review contacted the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA), however, did not receive comment by the time of publication.
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