The Rooihuiskraal community came together this past weekend to fix potholes in the area.
Residents gave up their Sunday morning to make a difference in their community, and those who couldn’t be there, helped ensure the work was done with donations towards the road repairs.
Neil Engelbreght said: “It was very successful. Luckily we had the community to provide assistance financially.
We also had offers of some assistance and support from local councillors, but we didn’t want this to be political, this is something that came from and was done by the community.
We eventually filled 12 potholes. The biggest ones were in Uitsig Road, one took seven bags of tar to fill.
The process of getting it done was surprisingly easy.
It was a case of getting the community involved. We had to make a couple of calls to councillors and that sort of thing to check the legality of what we wanted to do.”
Engelbreght said that residents can’t just start closing potholes. National and provincial roads are the responsibility of the municipality in that specific area.
“We were going to try close some holes on Old Johannesburg Road, but we found out it is a provincial road, so we couldn’t touch those.”
He was nominated to head the project to get the work done properly, since his company does similar work.
“Behind the scenes we have a group of about 60 people, with six helping out on the day.
We took in sponsorships from across the community, and things like the compacting machinery, sponsored by Julius Labuschagne, were essential in getting this done,” Engelbrecht said.
“We couldn’t have done such a good job without the generosity of these people. With something like that big hole we filled, his machinery was indispensable.”
Labuschagne told Rekord that he was happy to help his community in any way that he could.
“If we don’t help, it will all fall apart.
We as a community need to stand together to get things done.”
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