Residents in Boksburg have apparently had enough with fibre installations causing havoc on their pavements and driveways.
Residents from all over Boksburg have expressed concerns over the installation, impacting pavements and driveways.
“The residents of Atlasville, including myself, are at our wits’ end regarding these installations,” said a frustrated Pierre Marneweck.
“If it’s not water pipes its electric cables. They dig up pavements and leave them looking like a rubbish dump when they ‘close’ it up again.
“They originally stated they wish to communicate with the community on all areas of complaints but that now seems to have come to an end.
Anonymous from Atlasville wrote: “We cannot take this digging and messing up of the pavements caused by the laying of fibre anymore.
“We know the pavements belong to Ekurhuleni, but those who care about their gardens cannot tolerate it anymore. “Just as we treat the grass, the contractors come and destroy everything.
“They do not care. It is going on for weeks, and that awful blue or orange nets are an eyesore. It is a disaster. The workers are not cleaning up nicely and take forever to finish.
“Not everyone cares about fibre, so can the people who need fibre contact a specific company and sort it out at their own place?
“I saw everybody in our street is so cross and worried about their paving and flowers. They are very irritated. There are also too many people that should not be here. We want to be a clean and tidy suburb, but with all the fibre rubbish it is impossible.”
Ward councillors
Ward 22 councillor Ruhan Robinson said he received many complaints from residents.
“Most of which have been more along a general nature as residents are justifiably upset that their pavements are dug up multiple times.
“More specific issues have also been reported and indeed, water services have been hit quite a bit.
“The water department had to do a great deal of work in repairing pipelines across town,” said Robinson.
According to Robinson, the energy department has also needed to fix cables on a more than desirable frequency. Particularly in the Beyers Park and Westwood areas, residents have experienced outages as a result of fibre companies hitting cables, with as many as four outages in a week at one point.
“I cannot speak against the technological advancement and opportunities brought about by residents having access to fibre. I also cannot speak against the need for a competitive environment where residents have a variety of providers to choose from.
“What I will say is that I am disappointed with the implementation of fibre from both how certain contractors have been careless and at the same time, the City of Ekurhuleni’s failure to hold contractors to account.”
Robinson is of the opinion the wayleave policy has to change so as to require a deposit from companies before being allowed to dig up trenches.
“I believe it will be an incentive for contractors to work with more care, as it is easier to prevent damage than to fix it afterwards.”
According to Ward 17 councillor Simon Lapping, society and technology is changing all the time.
“I do believe we need to adapt to upgrades happening. However, with this said, the way fibre companies and the municipality have gone about it leaves much to be desired and could have been done better.”
Lapping said while some fibre companies have made a huge effort in being proactive and engaged with councillors, there are others who believe it is their right to not involve either the community of councillors and that is problematic.
“Fortunately we live in a free market society so this allows consumers to make a choice. I do believe fibre companies that have gone the extra mile will benefit at the end of the day.”
Lapping has submitted a motion to council at the October council meeting to ensure all contractors have to use detection equipment regarding underground services in order to minimise destruction or damage to other services.
“As it currently stands, a number of companies do not use this equipment hence the problem of damaged cables and water pipes.”
Ward 32 councillor Marius de Vos said the contractors restored most of his ward’s pavements and driveways after installations.
“Unfourtunately, this is not the case in Boksburg CBD. The pavements are left in ruins with water leaks and heaps of ground leaving the community up in arms.”
As fibre installations resulting in complaints about ruined pavements, we asked locals if they think it is a positive contribution to the community.
“I think it is wonderful fibre is being installed. We should be excited about the new world opening up in our community,” said Lizelle du Preez.
Zescke Bell does not think it is good at all as water pipes are being damaged and fibre cables are just something else that can be stolen.
The Advertiser has not received comment from council or of a fibre company at the time of going to print.
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