By Bev Mortimer: Owing to the extremely bad state of the road and after several local accidents, plus many reports of destroyed tyres from fuming residents and visitors here, an altruistic local, Trevor Wright, spent yesterday, a Sunday (29 March) placing bright orange flags on the R330 between St Francis and Humansdorp.
There are 165 potholes on that stretch of road – a new record it is said by a local counter of potholes.
Trevor planted 30 flags and aims to plant about 50 more – where the biggest and most dangerous ones are. And his giving up his personal time on a Sunday has led to an amazingly united and excellent response from donors and others wishing to help and contributing, such as donating funds for flags ‘@ R20 a flag’ yesterday.
Many locals have already lauded the achievement and there have even been calls of “Trevor for Mayor” on social media. The St Francis community is extremely proud that someone is at last physically helping prevent accidents following the lack of action in this regard by the powers that be, ie the local municipality and province.
Locals have been complaining in social media for the past month that neither official entity has placed just some orange cones or warning signs at dangerous spots. A car nearly overturned near Cape St Francis last weekend while cars have been damaged by swerving to miss some crater-like holes. There have been many accounts of “close to a seriously bad accident” reports, almost daily on this dangerous stretch of road.
Many locals in St Francis and in other Kouga towns like Jeffreys Bay have complained to Kouga Municipality to whom they pay rates and services, but the municipality has related this is a provincial road and it is up to Province to fix.
Province last week announced it had given permission for Kouga to fix the roads. However with Easter imminent and owing to Easter and school holidays , no action has been taken yet by either the municipality or provincial officials.
Trevor says his primary motivation for planting the flags is foremost to prevent an accident, injury or even death. A second motivation he says, is to break away from the traditional approach where members of the public feel everything has to be done through the authorities, with their blessing. “Increasingly groups of like- minded people are doing what needs to be done, especially when health and safety is at risk, with or without governmental permission. When local or provincial government does not do what they should be doing, and fail to communicate properly, then the community will increasingly go ahead and get it done.”
Trevor notes the excuse by the local authority that “Our hands are tied” is no longer acceptable to local communities. “Our municipality should be much more open to community input on service delivery issues.”
And fellow humanitarians, like Barry Buchman, are planning to hire a contractor to urgently fix the dangerous potholes before Easter. Barry Buchman is driving this initiative, Trevor relates, adding he and Barry are working together to make the road safer.
Barry related yesterday: “We are getting a quote tomorrow referred to us by a sub contractor, Scribante. They drove the road today and will quote on repairing the worst of the potholes, starting with the one in the dip.
“Some of us citizens believe it’s time to take matters into our own hands. Once we have costs there will be requests for financial contributions to assist with the expense.
Barry also says this will be a proper repair . So residents can expect a proper repair – no like the past few years of quick filling tar into potholes.
St Francis Chronicle 