Green Valley residents await Bitou action

PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - The Green Valley community has decided to wait for the Bitou Municipality's next move before considering further action.

This, after a violent service delivery protest two weeks ago and several meetings with key municipal roleplayers since.

A lack of housing was one of the main issues behind the action, which saw about 600 residents gathering in Wittedrift on Monday, August 27 and barricading the access roads to the community with burning tree branches.

Residents claimed that not a single house had been built in Green Valley over the past 18 years. Other issues included the lack of basic services like access to water and sanitation.

The community gave the municipality seven days to respond to their concerns and since then have had two meetings with municipal officials, on Monday, August 31 and Sunday, September 6.

Longtime resident Stnel Williams said this week that various options had been placed on the table, but that the community agreed to wait until next year when the municipality's new housing projects would be approved.

"In the meantime we want the municipality to start delivering on our other issues. We have asked them to start by providing residents with serviced erven so that those who need to can start building their own structures. Residents need access to water, sanitation and good roads to start with," Williams said.

He added that the community would wait and see if the municipality delivered in this regards.

Municipal spokesman Howard Swartz was not able to comment after the second meeting before going to print, but he had earlier said that various housing options had been discussed with the community. One of these involves purchasing a privately owned property in the area for houses to be built. He added that this would, however, be a lengthy process.

He said another option was to build homes on the community's current sports field.

"This is however not a good option. It is a low lying area which becomes very waterlogged after just a bit of rain," Williams said.

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