PHOLA – Community members of this area are not going to wait until they cross the bridge, but will get things fixed before there’s any trouble. The residents are not pleased with the shoddy construction work of two bridges in the village and they are not going to turn a blind eye.
Last week they stopped the construction company which was currently busy with road rehabilitation and the construction of the bridges, demanding intervention by the local municipality.
The irate inhabitants contacted Mpumalanga News on Friday to voice their grievances that according to them had been falling on deaf ears ever since they started raising them.
Upon arrival at the construction sites, this journalist also witnessed the cracks that have already started to show even before completion of the work. The residents claimed that the construction company used cheap material and concrete to build the bridges and one of them was built on top of an old one.
“It’s cracks all over and if the little rain from the two previous days have managed to cause such damage, what will happen during heavy rain. The other bridge is too small and won’t be good enough for cars and buses that use the road,” said an angry community member,
Mr Morris Maluka.
Their main concern is that if they ignore the substandard work, the community will suffer again since the bridges will not be strong enough and according to them they’ll be back to the street fighting about the same bridges.
“At some point we protested because of these bridges since they were posing a danger and now they come and do this compromised service. It feels like we are moving backwards instead of forward.
Responding to the newspaper’s enquiry, Mbombela Local Municipality’s spokesperson,
Mr Joseph Ngala said this was not the first time complaints had been raised by the community regarding the project.
He added that some of the matters had since been dealt with and the construction company as well as the project manager were aware of the concrete issues.
“The contractor is well aware of the issue and just when he was about to fix it, the residents stopped the project and their action is only going to delay the project and incur additional costs,” said Ngala.
He added that as much as they appreciated policing by the community, the contractor needed to be given an opportunity to rectify the mistakes.
Ngala concluded by saying that they were going to engage with the MMC for infrastructure development and ensure that this matter was resolved so that the contractor could go ahead with the project.
