One of the residents fixing the pothole Photo Supplied
Johannesburg – Potholes are road users’ no.1 enemy. With certain parts of the country experiencing heavy rains, new potholes are created and existing ones get worse. Instead of waiting around for municipalities to fix them, residents are taking it upon themselves to fix up their roads.
Zunaid Akhalwaya, a concerned Greenside resident, is part of a group that decided to fill up the potholes. The idea to patch up the roads was first mentioned by Tahir Jamal, another resident of Greenside, said Akhalwaya. It was he who pointed out the conditions of the roads and that something should be done. The first pothole they tackled was on Barry Hertzog.
“I actually volunteered to buy some bags of tar which I bought from Builders Express and with no knowledge or anything on how to do it but it was a fairly easy process … That was a very bad pothole which was in a blind spot where a lot of people couldn’t see, especially when it would rain and when it was dark. There were many accidents and stuff like that. It took us about 15 to 20 minutes to fill.”
Quite a number of cars and buses have driven over the pothole in the past few days with no concerns to be reported. After the success of that, a few more potholes were targeted to be filled in the area.
Residents can not wait for government to fix potholes
Akhalwaya admits that citizens need to rise up and better their surroundings instead of waiting for the government to respond. Avoidable accidents take place and the potholes only get bigger while we wait. Many residents came out to help and were surprised that Akhalwaya and his crew were fixing potholes in other areas as well and not just their own.
“This very large pothole that was appearing caused many accidents … On the day we actually did it, we had many residents that came out and offered assistance with either helping out with traffic or giving us some company. We’ve had some residents that offered their help and they were quite amazed with the fact that we were doing some small little potholes that were outside their houses. We pointed out to them that the point wasn’t to do it only in our street but to try the whole neighbourhood.”
For Akhalwaya, It is not about saving on damages to vehicles but about saving lives. This is why they decided to act and not wait on the government. If this work can save one life, it will be worth it.
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Doing their best with whatever knowledge they have
Armed with bags of tar and knowledge acquired from YouTube, Akhalwaya and his team set to work. While not having the necessary knowledge and skills, the potholes have so far stood the test of time. However, only time will tell if their work is substandard, Akhalwaya jokingly said.
“Buses have actually driven over it for the past three days. It does look okay. Whether we’re doing the work exactly to standard, only time will be able to tell … Obviously we got no experience in this. The process in these potholes is basically the stamper. We’re using a manual stamper. Our next process is maybe to try and hire one of those machines and maybe that might compact the tar to a better standard.”
Akhalwaya is opened to suggestions and tips from those in the engineering field. He hope that they will be willing to assist the group in perfecting their pothole filling method. His main hope is that this will spread like wildfire and other communities will take up the initiative.
To hear more about Zunaid Akhalwaya and how the community banded together, you can listen to the podcast here
