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After an outcry from motorists about pothole-ridden roads in the city’s suburbs, Buffalo City Metro tackled Buffalo Street, the North-East Expressway and Oxford Street which are some of the most badly affected.
Pictures and videos of the metro’s workers on social media caused a stir, with comments from residents from other areas such as Amalinda and Cambridge also in need of help.
Crumbling roads are driving Buffalo City Metro residents to the edge — and the recent deluge has only worsened the situation.
Metro spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said the war against potholes would be waged until it was won despite it being an ongoing exercise “because we are chasing a moving target”.
“If you take the weather outcomes for the last weeks, it’s been raining at times for six consecutive days, meaning no meaningful work can be carried out thoroughly and the roads will be severely affected.
“The ideal is to repair and rehabilitate roads to be in a new condition rather than repair potholes, particularly with an infrastructure network that is old.
“So the budget is a challenge considering that we are a rainy region, hence we aim to prioritise our most busy and used roads when undertaking repairs,” he said.
Ngwenya said BCM had about 1,350km of gravel roads and 1,600km of surfaced roads.
“There will be potholes developing because of the volume of vehicles travelling on our roads.”
He said since the last financial year, BCM had fixed more than 17,000 potholes and resurfaced several roads.
Ngwenya said for the 2024/2025 financial year, the budget to fix rural roads was R37m and for surfaced roads it was R54m.
“The municipality does have a midterm budget adjustment period and this is where we are hoping to request for additional top-up budget particularly since we are going towards a wet summer.
“We want to apologise to motorists who have been affected by any potholes and the inconvenience that occurred.
“We aim to have a decent turnaround in fixing potholes but at times there are factors that prohibit this process from being smooth,” he said.
Social media users took to BCM's Facebook page to express their dissatisfaction over the state of their roads.
Kenny Beling said: “Potholes and more potholes never repaired in four years ... Amalinda, Goodall, Grogan, Edmund, Rosedale, Kelly, Kenny, Canute and Koch streets is only scratching the surface ... some cannot even be navigated with a car.”
Moses Smith said: “Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality come fix Amalinda roads.”
Gonubie Ratepayers’ Association chair Henri Smit said residents of the seaside suburb were up in arms as their roads were filled with potholes.
“The frustration of the community is that we are at the point of taking matters into our own hands and suing them for the money spent on fixing potholes if they do not come.”
He said the residents’ concern was that promises were made and not kept.
“As of today, I am not aware of any potholes that are being fixed in Gonubie.
“We are still angry and people are up in arms. At this point, it appears as if Gonubie is left out,” he said.
National Community Dialogues chair Leonard Ncumbese said repairs to the potholes were long overdue.
“I am one of the people who have been taking videos of these potholes, we are just hoping [repairs] are not just because of the incoming National Community Dialogues service delivery event this Saturday,” he said.
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