While conditions in the Dawid Kruiper Local Municipality are obviously terrible as roads, sidewalks, ridges and parks are not maintained, the Municipality has now sent a letter to residents asking them to inform the Municipality of any problems.
The FF Plus's advice to municipal officials and councillors is to get in a vehicle and drive through the area. Then they will see for themselves what the problems are. Clearly this request to the community is just a smokescreen to win time so that the problems need only be rectified at a later stage.
In the meantime, residents have stepped in and started addressing the most urgent problems themselves, like filling up potholes in the roads and cleaning up the parks.
The FF Plus supports this tendency of "doing it yourself", but also encourages residents to still inform their municipalities of all problems so as to put pressure on the municipality to provide the services for which residents pay.
Residents simply are not capable of fixing everything that is wrong themselves. A serious problem is the chaotic and dangerous situation at the municipal dumping site and the people who live there who pose a threat to members of the public who want to make use of the site. As a result, garbage is being dumped in any open space.
Another example of where poor municipal planning has caused significant problems relates to the repair of Upington's traffic circle. Two weeks after work began to fix a large hole in part of the circle, everything came to a halt because a tender for concrete first had to be obtained.
There are more than enough problems – obvious ones that everyone is aware of – in the Municipality that need to be addressed without wasting any more time.
The FF Plus wants to encourage all residents in the area to respond to the Municipality's letter and to report everything that is wrong, however trivial it may seem. If people do not do this, the Municipality can use it as an excuse in the future, i.e. that nobody lodged any complaints and, therefore, nothing is wrong so nothing needs to be fixed.
Contact details: 083 357 3865
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