Even with Ward 61 having three Councilors, service delivery issues are not by any chance reducing, instead complaints from residents continue to pour in.
One of the many complaints received by the Laudium Sun is the ongoing non-functional traffic lights in the area. For some time now, the only traffic lights within Laudium, (corner 1st Ave and Jewel Str) which falls under the Tshwane Council, have not been working for some time now with the Council seemingly running out of excuses as to why weeks later, the lights are still not fixed. The traffic lights immediately outside
Laudium on Quagga Road and on the R55 (some of which are the responsibility of the Gauteng Province) have also been dysfunctional for some time now, causing major traffic congestion especially during peak hour time. Salim Pillay who works at the Mosque on 1st Ave told the Laudium Sun, “We always have a problem with these traffic lights. We have been reporting this robot almost every week and each time we
report it, the people from the Municipality just come and switch it on without diagnosing or doing proper investigation as to what is going in with the robots. A few hours after they leave the robots go off again. Service delivery is very poor in the area.”
Adding to Salim’s complaints, Thabitha Ntshudisane who visits Laudium every Friday, said, “there was never a day I came to Laudium and found the robots working. This poses a dangerous factor to both learners and drivers who use the road to travel. Explaining some of the risks,
Principal of Sunrise School, Ashmini Lewis said, “The big worry is that these robots and streets are used by children with special needs from Sunrise School and pose a risk to the life of the very learners, staff, and parents who frequent the school. For many months now, this problem with the faulty The non-functional traffic lights at the entrance of Laudium. traffic lights has been ongoing, and little to none has been done to safeguard the community, which uses the Sunrise School facilities. We write out of frustration and implore the Councilor to take this matter
seriously before any loss of life/lives as a lot of accidents can happen looking at the fact that some drivers tend to be impatient and some are just beginners.”
Sharing his frustrations with the Laudium Sun, Saga Naidoo stated that it gets frustrating that the robots are not working and this has a bad impact on him as in the mornings or evenings when they are in a queue, they give each other turns to get in and it becomes chaotic and he ends up being late in running his errands. Taxi driver, Isaac Buthane asked why the Councilors did not call points people from ‘Outsurance’ to assist at the entrances during peak traffic times.