SRA not successful

I FEEL sure, Mr Editor, that you and your readers must be heartily tired of the dramas of Richmond Hill. However, it is one of the things that The Herald does so well: bringing to the attention of Bayonians the human stories of the area.

Let me state upfront that I and my family are tenants in one of the houses of Richmond Hill, but very interested and concerned tenants.

I refer to the letter in Wednesday’s The Herald from Jan de Klerk (“Resident owners make SRA work”).

If I was to offer advice to the people of Centrahill it would be “say no” to a special ratings area.

The driving force when Richmond Hill’s was first mooted was a municipal employee in the form of Pierre Voges. Since the formation of the SRA little interest has been paid to the area by the municipality, unlike in Centrahill where a veritable army of municipal cleaners is seen at work almost daily.

For De Klerk to state that the Richmond Hill SRA is working well is nonsense in the extreme. A short walk around the area will reveal filthy streets, beggars, a multitude of those beggars called car guards and illegal businesses operating, and as for the “historical atmosphere”, where is it?

The RHSRA’s claim to fame is that it picks up black bags. Well, if the residents would put out the bags on the given days they would be collected by the municipality.

But now that it is known that the SRA will collect, who cares?

As for the security patrols, the question must be asked how a patroller, given the whole area of Richmond Hill, can be at all places at all times?

A long-held DA seat, Richmond Hill has been cursed with the last two ward councillors being utterly useless. As for the present one, well where is he, who is he, what is he doing?