Pavements damaged by installation

Ivan Goetz, Tamboerskloof

Through the medium of this newspaper, may I ask the citizens of Cape Town, what the conditions of their pavements look like after the contractors, installing fibre cabling have departed.

In the Gardens,Tamboerskloof and Vredehoek, the pavements are a minefield of sunken connection boxes and protruding manhole and water main boxes.

This also applies to electricity and water works where pavements remain untarred or brick paving has not been restored. Communication with the Council has gone on since the beginning of July.

Eventually council came to take some photographs. About three weeks ago, the company that installed the cabling in Tamboerskloof arrived and replaced one square inspection box, raised some sunken curbstones (uneven) and one oval inspection box.

Not only have they left behind debris but there are now large holes that have not been tarred,which is now a bigger hazard.

The City Of Cape Town seem to be pretty lax about these companies using unskilled labour to redo the pavements after digging them up.

No inspection if any, of these sites, as long as everyone got their “pound of flesh”, leaving ratepayers with really shoddy workmanship. How do you,the Citizens of Cape Town feel about the work done in your area?

City’s mayoral committee member for transport, Felicity Purchase responds:

The various service providers appoint consultants who apply for way leaves in accordance with the City’s policy and procedures. Way leaves are issued and if feasible, and the contractor wishes to proceed, a work permit is issued, indicating the City’s standards and specifications.

A representative from the City’s Roads Department is then tasked with monitoring the project as far as the scope of work, standards, etc. is concerned.

The City deals with over 5 000 applications per annum and despite every effort from the districts, we simply do not have the technical resources to monitor more than 18 companies on a daily basis. Thus, we rely on the consulting engineers appointed by the service providers to ensure that all OH&S and technical standards are met.

City staff will then inspect the complaint and where required, instruct the service provider to remedy the situation at their cost.

Where repeated non-conformances are brought to our attention this may lead to the cancellation of wayleaves, and the service providers are aware of this.

We encourage residents from all areas to contact our call centre and log a formal complaint in order for us to address the issues/complaints with the client/consultant.