Municipality does not have enough resources to maintain roads
The Greater Tzaneen Municipality simply does not have enough resources to maintain all the roads within the municipality as the rainy season beckons.
This is according to municipality spokesperson Neville Ndlala who said although they are busy with a monthly road maintenance plan, once the rainy season starts they will prioritise main roads and busy roads.
“We know once it rains we will have a lot of potholes and need to prioritise resources, both human and capital.”
He said there are current programmes in place to refurbish Boundary and Maritz Streets among others and they are awaiting finalisation of the tender to rehabilitate the roads and put on new layers.
“From time to time we encounter specific problematic roads and will resurface it completely, including road markings.
“On Fridays, we do inspections to check where potholes are and then do a plan for the week that follows and deploy resources, we also focus on complaints from the public or picked up by staff.”
He said most of the roads were old and are nearing the end of their lifespan and need constant refurbishing and filling.
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“The infrastructure is aging and needs millions to repair.
Many roads need new layers, mainly in the townships, where there were negligence and prioritisation issues.”
He said the issues have largely been brought on by budgetary constraints and the municipality having over 120 villages that also needed roads.
That did not bode well for the municipality and it has become a matter of competing needs.
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“Our budget is R 1.3 billion and with R700 million reserved for salaries and maintenance, we are left with around R150 million for new projects.
Our revenue base is not that big, we are only focussing on the five towns in the municipal area to get revenue.
With that, we also need to build multi-million roads in the villages where we are not getting any revenue.
“We simply do not have enough resources to maintain all the roads in Tzaneen.”
He said in some instances there were delays of delivery of the necessary materials, staff getting Covid-19, and other issues that may have hampered progress in maintenance.
Targeted areas in the next two weeks for maintenance such as road markings, pothole filling and stormwater drainage maintenance are Medi Park, Arbor Park, Premier Park, the new industrial area and Nkowankowa Sections A and B.
