By Thomas Thale
Illegal booms in some of the city's suburbs were dismantled by the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) on Friday.
The agency swooped on the suburbs of Kensington, Illovo, Inanda and Jukskei Park in the north of the city to tear down the illegal barriers. Among the booms removed were those on Sixth Street in Illovo, 11th Street in Kensington and Chroom Road in Jukskei Park. Two other booms in Inanda and Kensington were voluntarily removed by residents just before the JRA swoop.
Alan Agaienz, general manager of operations at the JRA, warned that the campaign to take out illegal booms would be stepped up from next week.
"We will first conduct an audit of applications to ensure that the right booms are dismantled before continuing with the removal campaign next week," Agaienz said.
The boom which was removed from Sixth Street in Illovo was only erected on Thursday. Marc Hussey, a member of street association in the suburb, expressed surprise that the JRA targeted their area.
"We submitted our application yesterday, and other areas have not bothered to apply. Our understanding was that only booms without applications would be pulled down." Hussey said the residents decided to put up the structure because of the severe crime wave which has plagued the area in the last 18 months. "My wife was held up at gunpoint and our neighbour was shot and wounded. The existing police response is simply not adequate."
The new council policy on booms adopted in April rendered all booms in the city illegal and gave residents of gated communities a three-month ultimatum to apply to the city to have their booms legalised.
Although there are 1 127 illegal booms in the city, on Thursday, when the deadline for applications to be submitted expired, the JRA had received only 297 applications. Agaienz said some of the applications were for more than one gate.
According to Agaienz, Friday's removals went off peacefully and municipal workers encountered no resistance from residents. "There was no resistance, none whatsoever," he said.
