Residents ‘disheartened’ by how repairs are done in Weltevredenpark

After more than a year of residents pleading with council entities to repair a hole that was dug to fix a burst pipe, the hole was finally repaired.

Despite the repair, a resident was still left with cement blocks on the sidewalk in front of his home, and no one taking responsibility for removing it.

The resident, Anthony Hughes, explained that over a year ago, Joburg Water (JW) excavated in three places on the sidewalk to repair the pipe but left one of the holes open. He noted he contacted Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) and JW to have it repaired, however, he was sent back and forth between the entities.

Hughes’ neighbour Selma Shipmen noted: “It was a hazard to little kids and pets as well, because of the deep trenches. They have cut away most of the roots of the tree as well, which means it will probably fall over in the next storm, onto a passerby’s car!”

Hughes continued to say around eight weeks ago the road was cut open to start the repair on the road and around four weeks ago JRA laid the tar. On November 14, however, they did not know what to do about the cement blocks that were taken out of the road to repair.

“This is very disappointing. It took 18 months to repair. The entities should have the right trucks and equipment when they come to do a job,” said Hughes.

On November 20 the cement blocks were finally removed after many discussions on who is responsible for taking them away.

Ward 126 councillor, David Brand explained the reason it took so long to repair the damage was that JRA does not do repairs for other entities, such as JW anymore and JW does not have people to repair the road as that is not their speciality. He said the main concern is funding and planning. He noted with regards to the cement blocks, both JW and JRA have nothing to do with it, as it is not what either of them specialise in.

Bertha Peters-Scheepers, the spokesperson for JRA, confirmed, “Before we can respond to the inquiry, it should be noted that the responsibility to conduct reinstatements was only returned to JRA during July. Before then, the function was the responsibility of JW from July 2022 until the beginning of July 2023. When the function was returned to JRA, JRA took on a backlog of reinstatements that were a result of work done by JW as well as other City of Johannesburg entities such as City Power and private sector companies who install fiber cables in households around the City.”

She continued, “Following the return of the reinstatement function to JRA, JRA has since embarked on a city-wide Reinstatement Drive to address the issue of left unattended reinstatements. Each region is allocated one week whereby regional office teams attend to the reinstatements in that specific region to address the backlog. In instances where the week concludes without all reinstatements being attended to, the responsible teams will go back to that specific region and attend to the outstanding reinstatements.”

Comment from JW has not been received, but as soon as it is, an update will be given.