Frustrated over the delay in relaying a damaged portion of the R500 Road in Kaysers Beach, residents have started filling hundreds of potholes to prevent accidents.
Kaysers Beach Rate Payers’ Association chairman Pieter van Schalkwyk said last Saturday residents from the area, Christmas Rock, Seavale and Cosy Corner filled 583 potholes using bitumen, sabhunga and cement on the 8.5km road.
The government gave the community the thumbs up.
Transport spokesman Unathi Bhinqose said: “The truth of the matter is that the demand far outweighs available budget. However, we always try to do a little more with less, hence our drive to have in-house doing at least half our projects and outsourcing the other half.”
Van Schalkwyk said: “All these communities use this road, this is the only road to the R72, and there is no alternative road.”
He said the road had been repaired in 2014 but was since damaged by heavy trucks.
“The whole issue comes from two years ago when we had numerous problems with people having their vehicles damaged and near fatal accidents. So we tackled the matter with the department of transport and they did appoint a contractor and everything went well until February this year when things started to fall apart again.”
He said: “The construction was not done properly and that created a huge problem, and at the same time there was a lot of development taking place and a lot of heavy load trucks using the road. In the process the road started to fall apart so we requested some action from department of transport.”
Numerous letters were written to the department since February. “In August we submitted another letter which was conveyed to the MEC (Weziwe Tikane) in Bhisho asking question with regards with what they were going to do. The MEC responded that she had R2bn for the road but she was short of R63bn. So we submitted another letter to find out when this road was going to be fixed and we have had no response.”
Funds were raised to fill up the potholes.
He said the department promised last Thursday that an in-house team would do the job at end of September. They then learned the department later said they had appointed a contractor to begin work in October...