Makana teams with businesses to fix potholes

Mayor welcomes gesture to ‘work together’

Makana Local Municipality recently expressed its appreciation to the local Pick n Pay store and Makana Caltex garage for offering to work with the municipality to repair potholes in various streets.

Pick n Pay business partner Jon Campbell had approached the municipality to discuss the possibility of a partnership to repair potholes around Makhanda.

A number of meetings followed between the municipality, Pick n Pay and Caltex Garage, leading to the start of the work earlier this month.

Makana Municipality and the two businesses have since signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) detailing the terms and conditions of the collaboration. The two businesses have undertaken to repair potholes on roads, which have been agreed upon by all parties.

Makana agreed to make available these roads from time to time for the purpose of this work.

The parties agreed that the personnel to be used will be selected, transported and trained by the Pick n Pay store and Caltex Garage.

Any other business that will support this programme will abide by the terms and conditions of the MOU.

Last week, patching began at the African and Allen Streets intersection.

Makana mayor Yandiswa Vara said: “We welcome this exemplary gesture, which has attracted the interest of various local businesses. The repairs will continue for as long as funding is available to do so and due to the expensive nature of the work, only smaller potholes will be repaired.”

A number of local businesses had already come forward to support the initiative. These included: BUCO, Hardware, Vox Fibre and RentAll.

The material used to do the work was purchased from local businessman, Andrew Kirk, who volunteered his time to show the labourers how to correctly repair the potholes.

“I believe this is the beginning of a great partnership and we would like to express our deepest appreciation to all the businesses who have offered their support to this wonderful initiative,” Vara said.

“This is a true illustration of what we can do when we work together to resolve our problems.”