Seeing the light during the day

VANDERBIJLPARK. – Another complaint about street lights that burn during the day and are off at night was recently called into Vaalweekblad.

This was after the Emfuleni Local Municipality |(ELM) told  the medical rooms of Dr JT de Lange on Frikkie Meyer Boulevard that “we are looking into  it”. The situation was unchanged the next day, prevailing also on Hendrik van Eck Boulevard. It has stayed the same on Frikkie Meyer for more than a month., extending  to the commercial centre of Vanderbijlpark. Various streets throughout the Vaal Triangle have lights burning during the day while being off at night. Many street lights burn permanently or not at all.

Being plunged into darkness at night while the lights burn all day  is a weird but typical reversal of sanity that South Africans have become used to over the years.

A fear expressed by many residents is that darkness favours criminal activity. Some paranoid residents even suspect that the darkness is a deliberate ploy to assist criminals with break-ins and disposal of corpses in vacant stands.

Examples of service delivery deficiency abound. Bursting water pipes see hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of megalitres flowing into storm water drains that are not blocked, wherein they find their way into Vaal waterways. Sometimes this water is not pure, either. Vereeniging resident complained on behalf of others about a foul stench that had prevailed for months.  This emanated from a burst sewerage pipe. A Vanderbijlpark high school had to walk the ELM municipal manager through the excrement that coated the rugby field because of yet another burst pipe. This was to let ELM know how serious the problem was.

The telephone number of the ELM official was never answered and another contact number for ELM was suddenly non-existent. There had been no response the an emailed press enquiry at time of going to press.