Africa-Press – Namibia. RESIDENTS of Rehoboth have expressed their concerns over the town’s roads, which, they say, have never been upgraded. The town currently has only four tarred roads.
The remaining roads are dusty and uneven gravel surfaces, with visible manholes. The road conditions worsen during the rainy season when the roads become muddy, causing vehicles to get stuck, residents say.
Emma du Plessis, a resident who owns a public transport business at the town, says she often has to replace her vehicles’ ball bearings. “Vehicles’ bottom parts just do not keep up. You regularly have to look at the joints and other parts. It’s a disaster. Our buses sound like trucks when we drive them on these gravel roads,” she says.
Du Plessis is urging the town council to tar the gravel roads. “We understand the council will not be able to fix this overnight, but at some time the council would have to start, because the dust is overwhelming,” she says.
Leon Joodt, who lives at Block C, says other towns, like Mariental, have well-maintained roads, and asks why Rehoboth cannot be the same. He says residents want better services since they are paying the council for such.
“Former mayor Rudi van Wyk has started grading the roads. We are paying for these services. I want these streets to look decent. I cannot understand that a person inherited a bankrupt council when money comes in monthly,” Joodt says.
On behalf of Block C residents, Joodt says he wrote a letter to the Rehoboth Town Council about a month ago, requesting the development of their roads.
Rehoboth mayor Enrico Junius confirmed the poor road conditions at a council meeting on 29 September. Junius at the meeting said Block C is not the only area with bad roads, but the entire town.
“Me and councillor Coetzee went with Mr Joodt and had a look at it. It is a valid complaint, and we will discuss with the administration how to put in a grader to fix parts of the roads,” he said. Despite the council’s willingness to assist, it is currently faced with various challenges.
“Our main problem is that our tipper truck is unlicensed, and that has been going on for a while. We can’t do proper maintenance without the tipper truck. The alternative is to source private companies to assist us, but we can’t keep saying our truck is not roadworthy. We need a tipper truck to maintain our roads properly,” the mayor says.
According to Rehoboth chief executive officer Simeon Kanime, the roads will be upgraded depending on the availability of funds. “We are looking at January. Once we start implementing the evaluation roll, we will see how much we are able to collect in terms of rates and taxes. It’s going into the financial year plan. I know we are not going to do it all at once, but we will go one by one until we cover large parts of , roads at Rehoboth,” he says.
While the town council cannot fully upgrade the roads due to financial constraints, it would start reducing the emission of dust on the gravel roads, he says.
“The plan now is to do as the community requests, get water from the boreholes, and on a regular basis apply it to these roads so that we can reduce the dust at least,” Kanime says.
