Theresa Taylor
With 10 000km of roads in Joburg, a “Youth Adopt a Pothole” programme could be a viable way to deal with badly maintained roads.
That is the idea behind the Soweto Youth Contractor’s Forum’s collaboration with Randspan Services. Recently, the forum gathered about 20 volunteers on a street in Protea, Soweto, and taught them how to fix potholes.
The aim was to give unemployed youths the skills to earn a living by repairing roads.
Volunteer Sandile Mbatha has been unemployed for five years. He hopes that his new skill wills get him a job with the Joburg Roads Agency (JRA).
“We hustled for (JRA) to give us the go-ahead,” said Benedict Sbu Legoko, secretary of the Soweto Youth Contractors Forum.
Getting the authorisation to work on the roads was not easy, and the team hopes that the JRA will take a greater interest in the project.
JRA spokesman Thulani Makhubela said there were always openings for work filling potholes and that prior training would be an advantage for applicants, although there were no guarantees.
The JRA ran similar training campaigns through partnerships with contractors.
Makhubela said potholes in the city were under control.
He said if he was white, he would be “blue in the face” from trying to communicate that potholes were not the problem but the symptom of a bigger problem, which is road resurfacing.
The JRA was attempting to be proactively and resurface as many roads as possible, Makhubela said.
Randspan business development manager Khehla Kunene said ordinarily they trained pothole fillers for a week, but were only able to finance two days, unless they received more support from the JRA.
It was important that workers were professionally trained and had the correct materials, otherwise the fillings would crumble or pop out.