Muni and business in cahoots against potholes

MARBLE HALL – Ephraim Mogale Local Municipality Mayor, Given Moimana and the local business community recently embarked on a potholes’ fixing initiative in Marble Hall Town.

The program’s rollout occurred at the background of outcries stemming from the many terrible potholes in the town, especially following the recent downpours that exacerbated their awful state.

With the aim to encourage people not to only complain about services but come up with efforts to better their environment, the business community and the municipality jointly took to the streets in effort to remedy the potholes’ current situation.

Residents and motorists complained that the huge and ever increasing potholes on the streets of the town posed a serious threat and added to accidents.

Mayor Moimana encouraged communities to heed the call of President Cyril Ramaphosa of Letsema and volunteer in doing the necessary community work such as cleaning the environment and fixing potholes.

During the State of the Municipality Address (SOMA) recently, Moimana said the have developed a road master plan which diagnosed the conditions of roads through the municipal area.

Moimana indicated that the master plan sought to improve access to available roads, and to facilitate provision of storm water drainage for all municipal roads.

He added that while those objectives were funded from Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG), the municipality must strengthen its human resources to speedily address the backlog.

He said that the total length of the internal road network under ownership of Ephraim Mogale Local Municipality was 1162, 9km which at 990km, a large part of it was still gravel.

The municipality will continue to optimally use transfer grants allocated from fiscus to prioritise areas that require urgent attention.

The Regae bus routes, one of the municipality’s projects funded through Municipal Infrastructure Grant in the financial year starting on 1 July 2022, has been budgeted R6, 754, 514.72, the Mabitsi, Morarela, Rathoke and Dichoeung internal roads projects have been budgeted R17,563,313.92, R2,9969060.68, R2,996,060.68 and R5,620,000,00 respectively.

“In a quest to fast-track service delivery, we have set aside R10 million for maintenance of municipal roads and storm water and municipal buildings,” said Moimana at the time.