Interesting article appeared in the EP Herald on Friday where the Jeffreys Bay community is taking the repair to their roads into their own hands. It seems, like St Francis they are fed up with the lack of will by the Kouga Municipality to do anything about the potholes so after negotiations with the municipality they reached agreement where KM would supply the material and local residents the manpower.

Last Monday St Francis Today featured the second half of our Personality of the Month,  St Francis Bay Residents Nigel and Lynette Aitken. During our interview Nigel explained that he ended up on the St Francis Bay Residents Association because of his concern with the deteriorating condition of the St Francis Bay Roads when he returned to the area some five years ago. His suggested solution at the time was exactly what the folks of Jeffreys Bay and Paradise Beach are now putting into practice.

Now we know many of the St Francis Bay Residents are retired and thus to expect them to man a vibrating compactor would be truly unreasonable particularly if they have had a few modifications made to their skeletal or arterial make up. More than a few arterial stents would be repositioned to say nothing of hip and knee replacements which would end up scattered amongst the tar. But there are more than a few young ‘uns that could be roped in and it really could be made into a festive occasion with the more mature residents setting up food and drink (non-alcoholic – there’s work to be done) at the roadside where work is being carried out.

But there is also another labour force just waiting to be harnessed and here is where those who can’t can. Sea Vista has hordes of young and not so young, unemployed men and women who could, with a little financial motivation and a bit of training and management, be employed to assist. A small donation in lieu of their time by those who can’t because of health and age could be used to pay this labour force and a ‘soup kitchen’ could be set up by locals to give them a good meal at the end of the day.

And it could have a greater long term advantages in that by training these youngsters in road repair one of them may have an entrepreneurial spirit and with a ready trained work force could set up a business that could eventually take over all the ongoing road maintenance in the area into the future. Nothing is impossible and if such an individual were to surface there would certainly be chance their securing funding to grow such a business, both from the community and from the provincial government or other sources.

Maybe it is something the St Francis Bay Residents Association cold look at more formerly going forward and start negotiations with the municipality for if we don’t do it for ourselves the KM certainly won’t.

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