Residents brave it without border fence

Neither contacting the councillor nor the Roodepoort police has helped residents of 1st Avenue, Georginia escape from hijackings and other crime.

Living next to the railway lines was already troubling enough, but now that the fence which functioned as a border between Georginia Station and residences have been taken down, crime is a given.

That’s what resident Chad Davies told the Record. His wife Maryke invited the Record to see how the fence was taken down to provide for a wall that was being built, but how the job was never finished. The Davies’ believe contractors were hired to start the job of building a wall around the station around a year ago and it was a tender gone sour. Visiting the street, it looks like the job was simply abandoned. A wall runs from the station at the corner of Fuller Street and 1st Avenue all the way down to their house, but not a meter further. Where the fence once was is an overgrown patch of grass and fallen trees and branches, providing the perfect spot for crooks to hide before they ambush unsuspecting victims.

Maryke said her son-in-law was hijacked and her daughter went through an attempted hijacking in the past few months. Her next-door neighbour, an elderly man, was attacked in his house and beaten to a pulp during an aggravated robbery. What further bothers the pair is Roodepoort Police allegedly not responding to call-outs to the street, their plight not being taken up their ward councillor and the lack of security, from the station’s side, where a boundary no longer exists.

In the short period of time the Record spent on the street at least a dozen people slipped through the divide and children were playing outside a neighbouring house.

“Often, children walk straight across and right onto the train tracks. It is extremely dangerous,” Maryke said.

Aspirant DA councillor Angela Morgan first sounded the alarm on the issue in an email to the Record.

“It’s been almost a year since the work on the station started and the fence has not been replaced; we have had numerous hijackings and house breakings due to easy access to the station — children also have easy access,” she wrote.

Though Morgan has committed to contacting the relevant department on the situation, she has not been available for further comment.

Roodepoort Police spokesperson Nonhlanhla Khumalo committed to provide feedback on crime statistics in Georginia in due course.

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