Lets Fix Our Roads - St Francis Bay Residents Association

The heavy rains this season have taken their toll on our infrastructure and the roads in particular have suffered. Some local businessmen and members of the community realised action needs to be taken to get the roads into reasonable order before the December holiday season. It is no secret that the municipality has no reserve financial resources and are struggling to fulfil normal maintenance requirements. Local businessman Ferdi Dippenaar kicked off the challenge dubbed "The Milkwood Save Our Roads Campaign" with a pledge of R10 000 in the daily Milkwood Speaks, the St Francis Village Superspar followed with a pledge of R30 000 and the Links with at least R10 000 and use of labour and materials.

Since then R62 000 has been pledged so far and I have undertaken to oversee the project with the help and guidance of Herman Pietersen, a structural and civil engineer and other local experts.

However it must be clear that this campaign will in no way remove responsibility of the repair and maintenance of our roads from the municipality in the future. That responsibility must and will remain with the council. However the fact is that we have a crisis and the council has insufficient financial resources available at present to handle such a crisis.

I have met with council officials who have indicated they will cooperate and assist with the supply of labour and equipment, thus ensuring that the council's indemnity will apply to all work conducted.
The council intends to commence the proper filling of potholes with tar now that the nationwide municipal strike is over. The Milkwood Save Our Roads Campaign will use any monies raised to undertake permanent repairs to particularly badly affected areas on the main arterial roads which are beyond pothole repair.

Our team will soon be commencing work on the first joint project with the St Francis Bay municipality which is to concrete the intersection of Harbour Road and St Francis Drive. The plans for this were designed by Herman Pietersen and the work will be overseen by Miles Cuffe, an experienced contractor. The Council assistance will be in the form of labour and equipment.

Council is first going to conduct temporary repair work to the particularly bad bend in Terragona Road so that traffic can be diverted along this route while the road work is in progress on St Francis Drive.

The Council will post and hand out flyers advising the public of the diversion once a firm date has been set for us to start our project. Unfortunately this will inconvenience people travelling to and fro between St Francis village and Santareme and this is regretted. However there appears to be no alternative. We envisage that the diversion will need to be in place for a period of around one week. The actual construction will probably be completed in two days. However once the concrete is thrown it must be allowed to set which will take most of the week. The intersection might be opened sooner for light vehicles depending on weather conditions.

The second area to be concreted will be the dip between Harbour and Walton Roads in St Francis Drive. While this project is underway drivers will be able to detour via Walton or Lovemore Crescent.

Please remember that the amount of projects we can undertake is wholly dependent on how much money we can raise for this purpose.

Account details for those keen to contribute:

"MILKWOOD SPEAKS ROAD AND POTHOLE PROJECTS"
INVESTEC PRIVATE BANK:
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 50005467871
INVESTEC BRANCH CODE: 580105
ACCOUNT TYPE: CCM call money fund