Msukaligwa municipality responds to current road conditions
Mandla Zwane, spokesperson of the municipality, acknowledged the current state of the roads.
ERMELO – In a recent online article, Highvelder discussed how locals were doing their own road upkeep as a result of the deteriorating conditions caused by the recent rains.
Although the municipality was unable to comment at the time of going to press, it later answered the queries.
Mandla Zwane, spokesperson of the municipality, acknowledged the current state of the roads.
“The state of our roads became very bad especially after the rains received recently. The opening in front of Midway butchery was not a pothole, but there’s a steel grating inlet that shifted due to heavy loads by trucks. It has been restored already.”
Furthermore, he said the people fixing roads with gravel, bricks, or rubble do not have formal written permission to do so.
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“The roads section does not condone the filling of potholes with foreign objects other than gravel or relevant patching materials. The institution would like to do preventive maintenance rather than reactive maintenance of fixing potholes and protecting roads from developing potholes by sealing cracks, resealing roads, fog spraying, or doing overlay where necessary.”
According to him, this act does to a certain degree affect the integrity of the road, although the roads section do remove all foreign objects when fixing those potholes that were previously patched by the community to try and restore the road to a rideable surface.
Zwane responded when asked about Gert Sibande’s involvement in the mobilisation of their Jet Patcher and which streets were prioritised, “The Technical Directorate Roads Section in particular, selects the roads to be fixed with the Jet Patcher machine and prioritizes the busiest areas that need urgent attention. we understand that most roads became worse especially after the rainfall received recently, but resources are also limited and we cannot cover all the affected areas. The Jetpatcher was only in the Msukaligwa area for seven days. They began work last week Monday and their last day was yesterday, December 12, with some interruptions due to rain.
In conclusion he stated they face several challenges which hinder them from doing repairs or maintenance on municipal roads and streets.
Shortage of equipment, a very limited budget and limited number of road employees were among the challenges according to him.
He classified the roads into these categories:
- Roads that are still driveable but require preventive maintainace like resealing or fogspray
- Roads with worn-out pavements must have the surfacing removed and a new wearing course applied, both of which are pricey. An example of this is Naude Street
- Roads that have deteriorated and require rehabilitation, which is extremely costly for the institution, for example, a section of Pet Street from N11 to Wessels
He did not respond to the question of whether there were any uplifting predictions for the state of the roads in the near future
