Incompetence seems to be at the heart of City of Joburg’s inability to spend the budgeted amount of R2-billion over the past two years to fix potholes in the city’s roads.
While residents complain about the state of Joburg’s roads, the reality is that the council has just not spent the money allocated to improve them.
Now the Department of Public Works (PWD) is calling for tenders from private companies to take on the job. Apparently the city has the money available to do the work but simply failed to do so.
The frustration of drivers in the city led to the intervention of an insurance company, Dial Direct and Lead SA to form a joint venture and begin fixing the more than 10 000 potholes that have been reported within the city.
Furthermore the PWD issued nine tenders last Friday for repairing potholes in the city. Each tender calls for contractors with a civil engineering rating of six from the Construction Industry Development Board. Those with this grading are entitled to handle projects worth up to R13-million.
The tenders are for repairs to Zandfontein, Hamberg, Waterval, Midrand and Strijdom Park in the north of the city and for Avalon, Benrose, Nancefield and Dobsonville in the southern suburbs.
According to the current budget – which runs from July to June – the city earmarked R245,2-million in capital expenditure on roads, pavements, bridges and stormwater drainage projects. To date the council has managed to spend about R33,6-million or 14% of the allocated amount.
In the previous financial year the performance was even more dismal with the city budgeting R584,6-million and then spending R16-billion or almost triple the original allocation. However, by the end of that year the council only managed to spend R152,5-million or just 9% of the total allocated.
So over a two year period, the council actually spend just over 10% of the R1,9-million allocated to fixing or building new roads, bridges, pavements and stormwater drains.
Meanwhile Dial Direct and LeadSA say that since December just under 150 000 people have visited the website (www.potholebrigade.co.za) and 13 000 reports of potholes have been logged.
The joint venture has already repaired about 10 000 potholes and used almost 720 tons of aggregate and 63 000 litres of bitumen to get the city’s roads into a useable shape. The venture is repairing about 3 000 potholes a month or 138 potholes on every working day of the week.
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