City vows to act on council flats
THE CONDITIONS people are expected to live under in council flats in Bertrams are a sad reflection and cause for shame for the City of Joburg.
Ward councillor Carlos da Rochas said he had been fighting for years to get the council to repair and maintain the flats.
The area is rife with broken pipes, non-working toilets, refuse, and it’s overcrowded.
So bad is the situation that people are living in the cellars and digging into the foundations to enlarge them for more living space.
This has fundamentally eroded the structure of the buildings.
They also make fires for cooking in these foundations, smoking out residents living above them.
Many of the balcony walls of the flats are crumbling and a few people have been injured falling from the first-floor units.
Electricity does not work and some residents are using a kettle element in buckets to heat water as the geysers are broken.
The drains are blocked so people are forced to use plastic packets as toilets. They have broken pipes in their flats and illegal electricity connections all over.
Council offices responsible for the maintenance of the flats and houses are right across the road.
Residents report these prob- lems to them daily, but nothing gets done. There is a burst pipe spurting water in the middle of the driveway which has been covered by a rock. It has been spewing water for years, Da Rochas said, so now the structure of the block has been compromised by the flooding.
“Joburg Water refuses to repair it as it is inside the premises. I am at my wits’ end. The city is a slumlord.
“People should not be expected to live like this.
“I have been asking for four years for the council to repair these flats and houses.
“Residents don’t pay rent because of the bad conditions, but they have undertaken to start paying once the repairs are done,” he said.
The council did build a wall around the flats, but there is no gate so it is useless.
“It was built to keep people outside from coming in and to help make people safe, and to make res- idents take ownership of the property, but it did not work because there are no gates.
Da Rochas finally managed to get the City of Joburg’s member of the mayoral committee responsible for housing, Dan Bovu, to inspect the site last week.
Bovu found that the health and safety of the building did not comply with the requirements of the council.
“The housing department has acknowledged the state and condition of the building and has noted that the building needs a redevelopment plan and repair work.
“However, the department cannot carry out refurbishment in the current financial year, but we will ensure that some necessary repair work is done promptly so that the building is habitable for the residence,” he said.
The department would include the whole renovation of the Morris Freeman flats in the next financial year, 2016-17, he said.