Ward 99 councillor Nicole van Dyk is pleased to see a large majority of residents of her ward following the rules and regulations of the lockdown. “My ward has been largely compliant and charitable. It’s been very encouraging to see.
“However, one can see with my ward – as with the rest of the country – that this is an extremely difficult topic to wrap one’s head around.”
Van Dyk, who is the councillor for suburbs Robin Acres, Robindale, Linden, Jacanlee, Darrenwood, Robin Hills and parts of Blairgowrie, stated that there are those who are still trying to take jogs or their dogs on walks.
She is more worried about the large groups of people heading to grocery stores and, ultimately, breaking the rules of social distancing. “More concerning than that though is how full the shops are each and every day with people not doing a big shop but running in to get a loaf of bread one day, then milk the next day.”
The day-to-day tasks of the ward councillor didn’t change too drastically for Van Dyk. “I am still on all social media and email correspondence daily and escalate all service delivery issues as per normal. The only real difference is I do not go out and can only do ward drives every so often to log issues.”
The many elderly and impoverished who need help have also needed her assistance to which she responded to with the community, which she labelled as charitable.
Ward councillors are human too and therefore capable of being infected by the virus. To avoid this she has been following the same rules everyone has been expected to. She expressed, “I am following the global advice of staying home to stay safe and I would recommend everyone else follow this advice as it could literally save your life.
“Due to being a high-risk person with chronic asthma, I take no risks and only go out once every 9 to 10 days to get essentials.”
Van Dyk reminded residents to continue following these rules along with only having an essential shopping trip once a week at the very most.
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