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R4 Rural areas: FREE • Platteland: GRATIS
23 Mei 2014
Darkness Fear lessl y the tr uth
Tzaneen is wrapped in
The scoreboard A crisis compromising the safety of the town’s residents. This is the long and the short of the new crisis in Tzaneen, regarding the lack of street lighting. More than three hundred street lights in Aqua Park, Premier Park, Arbor Park, Avis Park and Central were not functioning on Tuesday night and while two journalists of the Bulletin were driving around counting, more lights went out. The following statistics of non-functioning street lights confirm the seriousness of the situation: Aqua Avenue and Dr Annecke Street: 44; Voortrekker Street: 25; King Edward Drive: 28; Crown Street 10 out of eleven; Peace Street between the GTM and Dr Adams Circle: 12; Agatha Street: 37; Danie Joubert Street from the SAPS to the R71 crossing: 15; Morgan Street between FNB and Standard Bank: 4 out of 5; Kiepersol Street: 12; Tambotie Street to Essenhout Street: 12; Upper part of Essenhout: 8; Circle Road: 16; Boundary Road: 16; Bert Booysen Street: 7 out of 14; Harry Dilley Street: 6... and, and, and. We have a long list adding up
to a total of 331. This excludes Hamawasha, Flora Park, both industrial areas, Medi Park, and Pioneer Park and several streets in the CBD.
Crime & darkness It has been confirmed by the SAPS that the last more or less two months have shown an alarming increase in criminal activities in Tzaneen, especially in theft from vehicles that are not parked under lock and key. Even vehicles have been stolen recently. The criminal element in town is getting so bad that a Telkom cable serving part of the CBD was stolen on Monday night in Agatha Street! It has left a big number of businessess without all forms of communication that depend on Telkom lines stranded. The Bulletin was ons of these and we want to use this opportunity to apologise for Tuesday’s chaos when we could not take or make landline calls, we could not send or recive faxes and we had no internet. We made emergency plans and we were back on the air by Wednesday afternoon. Telkom said it could take up to a week to restore
communications in the CBD, since it is a very big cable that need to be replaced. This will no doubt cause a loss of sales to some, whilst others will loose money as a result of loss of orders, etcetera. The many and very large dark spots all over town offer ideal hiding opportunities for criminals. Residents should be vigilant in these days, since many residential premises are now rather dark at night.
GTM has no money The bad news is that budgetary constraints prevent the GTM from doing much to remedy the problem before 2015. The GTM’s electrical engineer, Mr Pierre van den Heever was not available for comment on Wednesday and yesterday. However, earlier in the week he said that the infrastructure was very old. Cables would have to be replaced and a lot of work would have to be done to fix the problem. He confirmed that there was no money for this and that the GTM was waiting for a grant form the Department of Energy. Numerous businessmen and
Bad for business professionals spoke about the problem during the past three days. A law firm was one of the places where the breakdown caused a major crisis. Lawyers were running around to organise for court cases to be remanded or to ask for short adjournments, so that they could try and find hard copies of documents needed in court. A medical practitioner in one of the dead spots also had to turn away patients who needed more than just a general examination.
Our comment The current situation is pathetic, inexcusable and scandalous and the GTM ought to jump to sort out the mess. There is money for fancy official bluelight 4 x 4 vehicles, parties, corporate gifts and many other wasteful luxuries, but us ratepayers have to live in darkness and run our businessess without essential communications equipment. Tzaneen’s future is bleak if the council and officials can’t pull up their socks. — Editor
INSIDE
Hundreds of streetlights in Tzaneen are out of order, casting large portions of the town into pitch black darkness at night. The impact on our town can be devastating...
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