​​​​​ROADS AND STORMWATER

The municipality has a mandate to ensure sustainable delivery and maintenance in respect of roads and stormwater services to all residents of Kimberley, Riverton and Ritchie, and to ensure that all urban areas are provided with accessible streets and proper systems for stormwater run-off.

The municipality must foresee to:

• The construction, repair and resurfacing of surfaced roads;
• The re-gravelling and scraping of gravel roads;
• The construction; cleaning and repairing of stormwater drains;
• The repair of sidewalks;
• The repair and erection of street name plates; and
• Management of municipal borrow pits.

Infrastructure

The main depot for roads and stormwater is situated at Ashburnham on Abattoir Road. A secondary small depot is situated at Ramorwa Street in Galeshewe for facilitating small internal projects. Cumulatively the municipality manages and maintains about 812km of road, of which 520km is tarred, 234km is gravel, and 58km is paved. Additionally, there is approximately 88km of open stormwater conduits, with the length of underground stormwater pipes and catch pit units still being audited.

The major challenge faced by the municipality in addressing roads and stormwater issues experienced by the community, is the maintenance of the old infrastructure. Despite extensive progress made between 2015 and 2016 to address some issues experienced due to the old infrastructure, other challenges such as excessive heavy vehicles travelling on the roads, and inadequate financial resources to meet the required minimum preventative maintenance measures exacerbates the problem.

Resources such as personnel and machinery constraints pose a huge challenge in addressing backlogs on dirt and gravel roads, as well as old tarred roads that have shown signs of disintegration.  As a result of these constraints in resources, our maintenance teams find themselves mainly involved with corrective maintenance rather than preventative maintenance, which would contribute to extending the lifespan of the roads.  

In an attempt to address these challenges, the municipality has adopted an initiative and strategy of continuous road infrastructure capital investment, which saw roads in excess of 70km of tarred roads being resealed and approximately 30km of gravel roads being paved in the past 5 years. These projects were aimed at extending the lifespan of our road infrastructure, as well as increasing the level of service of certain streets by upgrading them from gravel to a paved surface. For all other gravel roads which have not yet been upgraded to a paved surface, regular scraping and grading is done in order to keep the roads accessible.

 Infrastructure Contact Centre (24 Hours Service)
 Tel: 053-8306111