Selwyn Brickles has waited almost 10 years for Johannesburg Roads Agency to respond to his plea to have Old Road in Halfway Gardens tarred.
Brickles, who bought his house in the area in 2001, said he wrote to the agency in 2007 asking them to tar the gravel road, which also leads to an old-age home and a nursery school.
“I attended numerous meetings held in Region A. It was minuted last year that the agency would attend to this matter and that the planning department would make sure that our urgent request does not fall on deaf ears. This… gravel road is becoming an unpleasant road to travel on after every little bit of rain that we get,” said Brickles.
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However, the roads agency said there are no plans at this stage to upgrade the road to tar. Spokesperson for the agency, Bertha Peters-Scheepers added that such road improvements and upgrades are done in consultation with the community. “Many residents living in agricultural holding areas prefer to maintain the country atmosphere with gravel roads. Requests for infrastructural upgrades are usually done by the ward councillor on behalf of the community. Once the request is received and approved for an upgrade by the roads agency, such projects are placed on an infrastructural upgrade list in terms of priority, and work is undertaken in line with available funding,” she said.
Ward 132 councillor Annette Deppe said the road has been put before the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) of the City for the past 10 years but nothing has been done about it. “I will put it [before] the IDP again and, hopefully, it will be included in the City’s budget this time,” she said.
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