It has been a losing battle for the owners of Highveld Centre and Highland Mews to get the municipality to give the go ahead to tend to the potholes in the area of business.
Even a roundtable meeting and promises to see the problem as a high priority has led to absolutely nothing yet.
Witbank Highveld Investment (Pty) Ltd issued an application against the Emalahleni Local Municipality to fix the gaping potholes in the roads surrounding the shopping centre. As a second measure it was suggested that landlords fix the road and the municipality ordered to pay them as soon as the landlords issue them an invoice.
The application was set down on the unopposed roll for April 16.
On April 9, the attorneys acting on behalf of the local municipality opposed the application and the application was removed from the unopposed roll as per the court’s directives.
“This matter was removed from the roll on the basis that municipality is not the owner of the property in which potholes is alleged. The municipality could arrogate itself with competency it does not have to patch pothole of the private property as it will amount to wasteful expenditure .The municipality is liable to patch, but is entitled to charge for rates and services consumed by owner to that effect .The parties have agreed to this matter,” said Mr Kingdom Mabuza, municipal spokesperson.
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A roundtable meeting to settle the disputes was the next solution.
On May 14, the meeting was held and in the meeting it was agreed that the roads around the shopping centre was in a dilapidated state.
The municipality was given until May 31 to investigate the circumstances surrounding the credits owed to the landlord.
It was further proposed that the credits owed to the landlord be paid to the landlord in order to fund the repairs for the roads, if the council do not attend to it themselves.
The local municipality is not interested in fixing the potholes around the shopping centre in Klipfontein. Erika Theron sits between the gaping holes in the road.
In this regard, the council informed that it will not pay the costs for the roads if the repairs do not go out on tender, and further cannot enter into any agreement with any third party unless same has been put to tender.
It was agreed that the landlord will provide a proposal with regards to the paving of new roads to replace the existing dilapidated roads.
“After the meeting was adjourned, the landlord instructed our offices to request the representatives of the local municipality to provide our offices with the details of the contractors that the local council employs to repave the roads. The rationale thereof is that the contractors employed by the municipality have intimate knowledge of the structures and rules governing the municipality’s internal procedures that must be followed before authorisation is granted to repair the roads,” said Mr Jaco Koster from Koster Attorneys, the firm representing the landlord.
It has been almost six weeks and the municipality has not come back to the table with anything substantial.
“The lack of response from the representatives is indicative of the lack of urgency that the council has towards members of the community and has a total disregard for the economic well-being of the community at large,” Koster said.
Mr Matthew Osterloh from the property group said they are going to proceed with the application against the municipality.
“We are concerned about potholes in our city and we doing something about it. We have acquired jet patching trucks and we still have workers who are manually sealing potholes. There is remarkable progress and we have declared war on potholes,” Mabuza concluded.
