One year down the line, Bramley North residents are still complaining about missing manhole covers. Residents believe that there has been poor service delivery, particularly about maintaining the roads, and grass cutting.
Community members say that the issue of missing manhole covers is getting worse and Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) is not doing enough to fix them. They claim the worsening of missing manhole covers causes danger to their community.
“We discovered another manhole near Boreo Road, after having to physically supervise the grass being cut by a private company. The manhole has accumulated a lot of rubbish, which leads to road flooding when it rains. The response we got from the ward councillor is that he will let JRA know about this,” said Altaaf Adam, a community member at Bramley North.
” Overgrown grass has also played a role in criminal activities. Some neighbour’s employees have been followed, almost robbed,” added Adam.
According to Andrew Stewart, Bramley North ward councillor, with regards to manholes, JRA has been a poor performer for a long time, sometimes taking over a year for a missing manhole cover to be replaced after reporting. In fairness to the JRA depot, they often are not given the funding to maintain regular stock of manholes, and road barriers are the same.
“Regarding the uncut grass, City Parks is well aware of the Boreo road situation. Veldt grass is cut in line with City Parks policy, they burn the grass once per year,” added Stewart.
“The open manholes not only pose a risk to pedestrians, as one could quite easily fall into them, but those on the roads are also a risk to motorists. So aside from injured pedestrians and damaged cars, it has also become a place for overnight vagrants to keep their belongings – which include stolen items of course,” said Nishani Govender, Bramley North resident.
According to Govender, uncut grass on Boreo Road, where most of their back walls run, has proven to be an extremely high-risk area with burglaries and hijacking on a rapid rise. Even after weeks of complaints, when the grass is finally cut, they then have to wait another several weeks before it is raked and picked up. In the interim, the cut grass now gets into drains and open manholes which leads to another problem.
Mosa Makhalima, JRA spokesperson, said they have sent the query to the relevant depot and an inspection will be done early next week to check if the manhole cover sizes are available and also to ascertain if the manholes belong to the JRA.
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