Durban - A Westville businessman got so fed up waiting for the eThekwini Municipality to repair potholes near his business premises that he did it himself.
The municipality’s acting deputy head of roads and stormwater, Shan Govender, said the department was aware of Laven Padayachee’s complaint and it was “unfortunate” that he had fixed the potholes himself.
“It shouldn’t come to this,” he said.
“Also, the public are not allowed to fix the potholes on public roads.”
A roads department team had been sent out, but it discovered that the holes were in a parking area in front of a shop – on the corner of Jan Hofmeyer Road and Salisbury Avenue – which was not a priority, said Govender.
Potholes should be repaired less than 48 hours after being reported, but potholes in parking areas could take up to a week to be fixed, he explained.
On Monday, when The Mercury visited the area, a team from the municipality was fixing the remaining potholes, much to Padayachee’s delight.
“If my exercise prompted the municipality to fix one more pothole, then my job is done. I’m satisfied,” he said.
Padayachee, who lives in Malvern, said: “I made about three calls to the roads department complaining about the potholes, but nothing was done.”
The first call was made two weeks ago.
“They said they would send someone to have a look, but no one came. I called for the second time a week later and was referred to the Pinetown depot, which then referred me to Westville,” he said.
Frustrated by the fruitless phone calls, Padayachee went to the roads department’s Westville depot last week.
“Seeing that nothing was being done, I asked what was required to fix the potholes and decided to fix them myself.”
Padayachee said his car tyres were constantly being damaged by the potholes, and that was costing him money.
“On Sunday, I saw a poster that said something about the government fixing potholes and I just laughed to myself.
“I might not have done a professional job, and this might only be a short-term solution, but at least people’s cars are not getting damaged,” he added.
Padayachee bought four bags of tar at R160 each and used a litre of bitumen, worth R89, from his warehouse. He also paid a local car guard R100 to help him.
The Mercury