The City of Johannesburg on Wednesday warned it would again remove illegal boom gates and fences blocking roads and pavements once an audit of road closures was complete.
The city said it had to date only received applications to legalise about half of the existing illegal boom gates.
An audit by city authorities indicated that 309 applications to legalise 655 road closures identified in the city had been received.
”The number of road closures applied for in these applications range from two to 17 gates per application. The majority of these applications are from the northern and eastern suburbs of the city,” a municipal statement said.
”There are therefore 436 roads affected by existing road closures for which applications have been received. These applications are being processed through the Johannesburg Roads Agency in terms of council policy on security access restrictions. The decisions on the first batch of these applications are expected to be available within the next three weeks.”
The city added that the moratorium it had placed on boom removals so that residents could apply for their retention, has long expired.
”In order to comply with the policy it is therefore expected that all applications received after the moratorium deadline will be treated as new applications and that implies that where there are existing gates, they would have to be removed before the application is entertained.” — Sapa