Greenbelt in suburb a bit safer
WELTEVREDENPARK - Resident's association sees it fit to appoint a resident in the suburb as a caretaker of the greenbelt area.
Security and safety is a subject that the Welridge Resident’s Association (WRA) is serious about, as it plans to make the greenbelt area safer for residents who live around this beautiful, yet, dangerous section of the suburb. Ward 126 community liaison officer Jan von der Hyde explained that the biggest problem in the area is house break-ins that happen after hours when the criminals use the darkness of night as their way out. “These opportunistic criminals rob the houses and jump over the exterior walls into the greenbelt where they disappear with their ‘stash’, which they hide behind the bushes until they get time a day later to load it into their vehicles.”
The WRA decided it was time to take action and they employed Andrew van Nieuwenhuizen to look after the greenbelt and trim it where possible, in an attempt to make the area more visible and less attractive to possible criminals.
He said, “I was employed under strict instructions to trim the greenbelt at least once a month, and this may seem easy, but it’s a colossal task.”
He added and said the problems that are popping up now is that security and police vehicles cannot drive across the greenbelt area as they get stuck. “The same happened to me in my 4×4 as I was busy following a bunch of criminals when my vehicle fell into the muddy soil and had to be towed out by a TLB (tractor loader backhoe) machine the next day.”
The resident’s association decided that something had to be done to make the greenbelt easier to drive around for security vehicles.
“Previously, higher up in the greenbelt, we constructed a ‘pathway’ that made the rather small area on top easier to access for the police so we decided to continue with the project and we constructed a second path which we are almost finished with.”
Van Nieuwenhuizen further explained that because the area consists mainly out of clay-like soil, they had to insert a French drain in the middle of the belt that will channel the overflow of water into the river.
Von der Hyde concluded, “I want to thank the resident’s association for funding the project and taking the initiative to make the greenbelt area a bit safer.
