INLSA

NOT OUR TURF: The Joburg Property Company, which manages sports clubs in the city, says it is not responsible for the repair of the Pirates Sports Club hockey astro turf retainer wall, which has crumbled into the Braamfontein Spruit. Picture: Timothy Bernard

AN established Joburg sports club, which celebrates its 125th birthday next year, is being allowed to go to rack and ruin by city departments.

Pirates, which is in the Sir Lionel Philips Park in Greenside, is showing bad signs of neglect, yet no one is accepting responsibility for its maintenance.

Club manager Non Welsford says the access road to the club, which is a public road, has not been retarred for years. The Joburg Roads Agency (JRA), she says, claims that it cannot find the road on a map.

Besides the road, which is causing huge inconvenience to members, visitors and sports participants, the retainer wall that separates the hockey fields and the Braamfontein Spruit is collapsing.

As a result, the river is getting closer to the sports fields.

“If the wall collapses completely, there will be severe damage to our expensive astro turf,” she says.

Repairs and maintenance have always been carried out thanks to the generosity of club members.

“We do what we can with the finances we have, but we cannot retar the road or fix the river banks,” she says.

With the summer rains, the club fears that the surface of the road, which is just more than 500m long, will deteriorate even further and the potholes will become deeper.

Glynis Mauldon, who has been a member of the club for 20 years, says she has been trying to contact the JRA for years.

“In all this time, the road has never been resurfaced, just the odd pothole fixed.

“They did send a person out to investigate and they also looked at where the river is (getting) closer to the hockey astro turf, and still nothing has been done to reinforce the river banks.

“They promised that the resurfacing would be placed on the 2010/11 programme, but nothing happened,” she says.

Also, at the bridge on Braeside Road, close to the club, there is a lot of rubble and the water can’t drain into the stormwater drains, and then builds up on the road.

The Joburg Property Company, which manages sports clubs in the city, says the road and wall are not its responsibility.

Spokesman Brian Mhlangu says the road is a public one that does not have a name.

“It requires some maintenance – the road has not been resurfaced or repaired for a considerable period and there are potholes that require urgent attention. The JRA is responsible for this,” he says.

Despite repeated attempts to get a response, the JRA did not comment.