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THE MERCURY<\/p>\n
Westville businessman Laven Padayachee was fed up waiting for the eThekwini Municipality to fix potholes that had damaged his car tyres, so he fixed them himself, spurring the roads department into action. Picture: Gcina Ndwalane<\/p>\n
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Durban – A Westville businessman got so fed up waiting for the eThekwini Municipality to repair potholes near his business premises that he did it himself. <\/p>\n
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The municipality\u2019s acting deputy head of roads and stormwater, Shan Govender, said the department was aware of Laven Padayachee\u2019s complaint and it was \u201cunfortunate\u201d that he had fixed the potholes himself. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t come to this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, the public are not allowed to fix the potholes on public roads.\u201d <\/p>\n
A roads department team had been sent out, but it discovered that the holes were in a parking area in front of a shop \u2013 on the corner of Jan Hofmeyer Road and Salisbury Avenue \u2013 which was not a priority, said Govender. <\/p>\n
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Potholes should be repaired less than 48 hours after being reported, but potholes in parking areas could take up to a week to be fixed, he explained. <\/p>\n
On Monday, when The Mercury visited the area, a team from the municipality was fixing the remaining potholes, much to Padayachee\u2019s delight. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf my exercise prompted the municipality to fix one more pothole, then my job is done. I\u2019m satisfied,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Padayachee, who lives in Malvern, said: \u201cI made about three calls to the roads department complaining about the potholes, but nothing was done.\u201d <\/p>\n
The first call was made two weeks ago. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey said they would send someone to have a look, but no one came. I called for the second time a week later and was referred to the Pinetown depot, which then referred me to Westville,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Frustrated by the fruitless phone calls, Padayachee went to the roads department\u2019s Westville depot last week. <\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing that nothing was being done, I asked what was required to fix the potholes and decided to fix them myself.\u201d <\/p>\n
Padayachee said his car tyres were constantly being damaged by the potholes, and that was costing him money. <\/p>\n
\u201cOn Sunday, I saw a poster that said something about the government fixing potholes and I just laughed to myself. <\/p>\n
\u201cI might not have done a professional job, and this might only be a short-term solution, but at least people\u2019s cars are not getting damaged,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Padayachee bought four bags of tar at R160 each and used a litre of bitumen, worth R89, from his warehouse. He also paid a local car guard R100 to help him. <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE MERCURY Westville businessman Laven Padayachee was fed up waiting for the eThekwini Municipality to fix potholes that had damaged his car tyres, so he fixed them himself, spurring the roads department into action. Picture: Gcina Ndwalane Durban – A Westville businessman got so fed up waiting for the eThekwini Municipality to repair potholes near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-20145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}