Montclair councillor commends locals for improving the area
If communities want to maintain their area, instead of relying on the city, they should help each other to make their area look beautiful again.
WARD 64 councillor, Gavin Hegter commends residents who have taken ownership of their areas for not waiting for the municipality to do things like pulling weeds or maintaining local verges.
Cllr Hegter said it is encouraging to see people take these tasks upon themselves.
“It is clear they are as fed up as I am in battling with the municipality every day. Weed spraying has not been done because, according to the city, no contractor has been appointed to do the job as yet. This is the sorry state throughout the city and it’s in a total shambles,” he said.
In an email he addressed to the city council, Hegter questioned the awarding of contracts and what measures have been implemented in the spraying of weeds. “They responded by saying ‘the termination process of the existing contracts has not been concluded. The new contractors will only be appointed once the existing contracts have been terminated.’ This has been going on for months.”
READ: ‘Take ownership of your suburb’ – Cllr Gavin Hegter
The city’s response also stated that more contractors will be employed with smaller areas. Parks department districts have been instructed to use overtime to deal with the problem until new contracts are awarded. “Our parks department is so understaffed and under-resourced that they are battling to cope with their current workload. Now they have additional work piled on them because of poor management,” he added.
READ:
Disgraceful Bluff verges in disarray
Who did it and who fixes it?
He suggested that if communities want to maintain their area, instead of relying on the city, they should help each other to make their area look beautiful again. “People like Chris Lelong must be applauded for using the initiative to beautify and clean up Radcliffe Road and Labistour Place. He even painted the lines on the road. It goes to show that it can be done. I know we pay our levies and taxes and we shouldn’t be doing this but it is how it is and I urge people to stop with the ‘I pay rates so the municipality must do it’ attitude. It will definitely not make a difference,” he said.
He commends those who are trying their best to make their roads better and believe this positivity should be spread across the community.
