FAR NORTH
Bulletin 3 Maart 2017
www.bulletin.us.com
015 306 0198 • 072 930 1462 • 071 268 2543
R4
Rural ares:FREE • Platteland: GRATIS
Colour of the Year 2017
STEEL SYMPHONY 2
015 307 7756 40 Danie Joubert Street, Tzaneen
Another GV Road? The Specialist Paint Centre Tzaneen
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AGATHA ROAD DEATH TRAP. Motorists commuting between Tzaneen, and Agatha through Tzaneen’s new industrial area, are mostly unaware of the dangers that lurk beneath that section of the busy motorway. A sinkhole has started engulfing the road just metres from the turn off to Hamawasha. Half of the left lane has already sunk away exposing the corrugated culverts below.
Another week has gone and still no word from the GTM on their plans to fix the town’s potholes. Their spokesperson, Neville Ndlala, was issued an official inquiry from us on the state of the roads to which he failed to give a satisfactory response, blaming the state of the roads on the recent heavy rains. We published the correspondence between Bulletin and Ndlala last week. Following that article, Ndlala contacted our offices and requested a list of the roads most affected as he was allegedly in a meeting with the GTM roads-crew and wanted to know which areas in town needed to be prioritized. We sent him our list and asked our readers to forward their own complaints to him directly. We also wanted to know from you, the citizens, what the roads in your neighbourhoods looked like. The community complied and set out to photograph potholes around their town which most affect their daily commute. We have published those images in a photo exposé on page 10 of this issue.
In the meantime another huge worry is the massive sinkhole in the new industrial area which has now started creeping into the carriage way. This site was the cause of a major accident in September last year which tragically claimed the lives of Francois Erasmus, his son Danré, and a family friend, Mike Hawken. Whilst the rain is possibly to blame for the current widening of this hole, it most certainly is not the cause of it. Shockingly - to remedy the situation - the GTM poured a line of tar around the hole and placed green plastic bags filled with sand on its edges so as to prevent motorists from driving too close to the dangerously eroded fringe. There is another, larger, sinkhole on a different section of the Agatha Road near King’s Walden. Will the GTM wait until we have another George’s Valley incident on our hands before they step in and fix these roads, or will more lives need to be lost?
— Joe Dreyer: joe@bulletin.us.com
INSIDE • BINNE!