OPEN LETTER TO OUR WARD COUNCILLOR
Dear Councillor Deppe
Sunninghill Community receive emails from you occasionally with regards to complaints sent by residents and escalated by you to various Council Departments for action. Although we appreciate you doing this and keeping us in the loop by forwarding these onto us, they do not seem to be having the desired results. Not only does Council ignore the ordinary resident’s complaints but they seem to not take that of the Ward Councillors seriously either. The same complaints seem to be popping up time after time and the problems in Nanyuki road with regards to Jhb Water is a prime example. Councillor we do not for a minute hold you responsible for these problems as we do understand that Council is responsible for service delivery and not our Ward Councillor, however, when we are faced with the problems we are now experiencing, a rapid deterioration of our suburb into a third world area, who else can we turn too to fight our battles for us when we are not achieving the desired results but our Ward Councillor?
Our office manager is following all the correct channels in reporting all these problems, so are many other residents, at least four or five others who forward to us the reference numbers, emails etc that they send to the Council Departments. However we see nothing changing!
At present:
- Sunninghill has more traffic lights out of order than are working.
- Sunninghill continues to have streetlights failing all over and once reported it takes not the 14 working days they state but more like three months to get them fixed.
- Sunninghill almost on a daily basis has water leaks springing up all over the place, some caused by contractors and some due to infrastructure that just has not been serviced and maintained over the years. Not only do these leaks or in some cases gushes of water take days or weeks as is the case with Nanyuki road, to fix, but once the leak has been fixed a gaping big hole is left, either in the road, which becomes a danger to motorist or on the pavements. These holes are just not fixed. There is one in Sunninghill Gardens that is over six months old and still has danger tape around it. The trench across Nanyuki road has been dug up at least three or four times and continues to wash away in one of the busiest intersections in Sunninghill. There have already in the past few weeks been two accidents as a result of this, none of them serious thank heavens, but it is just a matter of time.
- Sunninghill has contractors putting in cables or pipes on a continuous basis. Although we welcome the work being done on infrastructure as it is long overdue, they dig trenches fill them and then dig them up again. There seems to be no control what so ever. Where are the engineering standards we used to have when contractors were obliged to know where electricity cables or water pipes were before they carried out the work? Not anymore, we regularly have electricity cut off, water pipes burst and who I ask is policing this? No- one it appears.
- Sunninghill has informal taxi ranks springing up all over, with the taxi holding area being full, these taxi’s park on pavements all over Sunninghill, causing traffic problems, security risks and generate huge litter problems. All our efforts to set up a meeting with the relevant Council people have been ignored.
- Sunninghill has Metro buses parked all over the place, on pavements and in the case of Sunninghill Estates, in the middle of the road. When we have called the Metro Police out to investigate they have found these Metro buses to be vacant, without even a driver to be found. They too cause traffic problems and will result in an accident occurring shortly.
- Sunninghill has many potholes all over mostly caused by JHB water inefficiency.
- Sunninghills streets are filthy. The volume of litter just seems to increase all the time. We even have a group of volunteers who on a monthly basis go on a clean up campaign, but sadly make little impact. Who will take responsibility for this?
- A number of Sunninghill residents have their homes flooded several times a year due to developers not implementing and or Council not policing infrastructure plans with regards to storm water. This particular problem has been going on for at least three years, more I am sure.
- Sunninghill has become a dumping ground. Road reserves, especially the K60 have become a nightmare with people coming from outside of our area to dump here. This we know as a resident recently caught a company from Rivonia dumping on the K60 road reserve. Here again no-one wants to take responsibility. From one department to another we go with responses about this not being their responsibility. In fairness to the Councils Environmental Health Dept, this Dept and City Parks are the two departments that seem to do a reasonable job. The problem here lies with the Provincial Department of public transport, roads and works.
This list could go on and on. We the residents and businesses in Sunninghill have invested huge amounts of our hard earned money in this area, we pay our taxes and yet we see our investments in what used to be an upmarket area, dwindling in value as our area slips into third world status. Although our efforts to work with the authorities has been very successful in reducing crime significantly, and we thank the Sandton SAPS for working with us, our efforts with the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council have been unsuccessful. We do of course generalise as there are some departments where there is an effort, such as environment health and city parks.
Councillor as mentioned previously we the residents and businesses of Sunninghill do not blame you or your party for these problems, however as our Ward Councillor we appeal to you to take a stand and fight for the rights of those that voted you into power.
Yours truly,
SUNNINGHILL COMMUNITY EXCO
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