JOHANNESBURG - Centurion keeps sinking deeper. Authorities have not been dealing with major sinkholes in the area.
They've been disrupting lives and livelihoods for years now. The City of Tshwane has budgeted R14 million to repair them, but it will cost over R700 million.
A year since the Gauteng Provincial Government promised residents a dedicated sinkhole task team— the cracks are only deepening in the City of Tshwane. As for the task team? it's nowhere to be found.
Nicole Van Dyk, Democratic Alliance MPL said while the City has managed some interventions like bringing on geological profilers, there is still no set allocation of funding.
"They’ve only got a plan for four sinkholes. There are around 5,000 sinkholes across the province. We’ve got 67 of those in Centurion," Van Dyk said.
"There are very promising preventative solutions that the province is not looking at. What was highlighted over and over again was that if proper leak detection was done- it would because most of them coming from minor leaks building into the massive leaks that we see," Van Dyk added.
Despite needing between R300 to R720 million to repair them all, Tshwane's sinkhole repair budget hovers around just R14 million.
The City's attempts to secure a local disaster declaration to unlock emergency funds from COGTA have been unsuccessful leaving the sinking city to deal with its multi-million Rand crisis on its own.
eNCA's attempts to get comment from the City were not received by the time this story was published.
Watch video for full report by Naomi Kobbie