Durban — The Durban community was up in arms recently when contractors installing underground fibre cables cut water pipes and electricity cables during excavations.
Now the city is proposing a new wayleave and excavation by-law which will provide protection to the municipality and the citizens subjected to a great inconvenience when unknown and unauthorised parties excavate municipal or private property in Durban.
The eThekwini Human Settlements and Infrastructure Committee will put the policy up for public comment after the matter was approved at a full council meeting on Thursday.
The by-law provides for the regulation of all works to be executed in any public road reserve and municipal servitudes; for wayleave procedure; for the regulation of protected precincts; for matters relating to costs; and, for existing and planned services.
The Democratic Liberal Council leader Patrick Pillay said the by-law would bring about greater co-ordination, accountability and monitoring of all excavation work done on municipal verges and property by unknown contractors.
Pillay said sometimes water and electricity infrastructure was damaged and people had to go without water and electricity for days.
“Our citizens have recently been bombarded and frustrated when different fibre contractors without any consultation and consideration towards their properties and verges have dug up and damaged their property,” Pillay said.
He added that the by-law will restore power back to the people as a major stakeholder and require arrogant contractors to submit to the call of residents.
eThekwini exco member councillor Yogis Govender told the council that the DA caucus paved the way and pushed their councillors to interact with the roads, stormwater, electricity and water units that were also reeling from the aftermath of fibre excavation.
Govender said in June 2021, former DA caucus leader Nicole Graham filed a motion citing that the fibre contractors had created huge problems in the city during the installation of their infrastructure.
“The problems got worse before they got better. They had wreaked havoc with municipal infrastructure and private properties as well. At the time some of them were even chased out of neighbourhoods because of the destruction and outages in electricity and water they caused,” Govender said.
Equally enraged, added Govender, were eThekwini operations teams for water and electricity who were often not consulted prior to excavation, nor when damage was done.
“These contractors were using thread tape and bottles to fix some nicks they caused with water, in other instances, merely covering up the dig with no fix and not reporting the fault,” Govender claimed.
She added that meetings with officials impressing upon them to act led to a resolution to take action against such contractors up so that “we could achieve accountability, enforcement and recover damages were necessary
Daily News