Note to Editors: Attached please find a soundbite in English here and Afrikaans here by Leanne De Jager MPL.
Residents and landowners along the D1883 in Tshwane, the gravel road linking Wallmannsthal Road to Moloto Road near Roodeplaat, are being left to fend for themselves as the road deteriorates into a severely corrugated, near-undriveable state. The gravel road requires urgent levelling, filling of gaps in the surface and proper drainage. In its current condition, this road poses a significant risk of serious motor vehicle accidents.
The DA calls on the Gauteng MEC for Roads and Logistics, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela, to immediately implement the following measures:
-Dispatch a grader to the D1883 road before the onset of rain,
-Provide residents with a formal reference number and response to their outstanding complaints.
-Commit to a regular, scheduled maintenance cycle for the D1183 in line with the rates residents pay.
Grading only happens reactively, when residents complain loudly enough, rather than as part of a scheduled maintenance programme. With the rainy season approaching, an already uneven gravel surface will rapidly become impassable and dangerous, risking vehicle damage and cutting off access to businesses that depend on this road for their livelihood.
See photos here, here, here and here.
The road serves Buffelsdrift Game and Nature Reserve and surrounding farms. These are properties that create local jobs, draw tourism to the area, and run entirely on their own water, power, and services, yet still pay full municipal rates and taxes to the City of Tshwane. Despite repeated requests to the Department of Roads and Logistics and calls logged with e-Tshwane, they have not yet received any response.
A DA-led provincial government would ensure that gravel roads like the D1883 are graded on a proactive, published maintenance schedule, not only in response to public pressure, with a functioning complaints system that issues reference numbers and tracks resolution.