Cape Town – A father from Rustenburg in the North West has claimed that his son almost drowned in a pothole.
Video footage circulating on Twitter showed a gaping pothole in the middle of the street.
In the video, a young man dips a long stick to near-full length into the pothole. The pothole appears deep enough for a small child to easily drown in it. The upset father calls out the municipality to ask them to fix the pothole within four hours or he will take serious action.
“To the leadership of the municipality, I would like to give you a very stringent warning. If you don’t barricade this in the next four hours, wait until you see what I do. My son nearly drowned. I just came back from work and if you do not solve this in the next four hours, just see what I am going to do,” the father says.
This man’s son almost drowned in a pothole. In a pothole. pic.twitter.com/RRPzUTEqNL
— Mmusi Maimane (@MmusiMaimane) January 5, 2023
In the aftermath of the video, the Rustenburg municipality released a statement to confirm that they had seen to the repair shortly after it was reported.
“A water unit foreman was dispatched to assess the leak. Upon arrival on site it was identified that the top soil collapsed and exposed the pipe leak due to the pressure of the leak. The foreman proceeded to allocate the complaint to the team and the team arrived on site. The pipe leak was repaired and the excavation was barricaded,” it said.
“The municipality responded within two hours and the leak was fixed within four hours of being reported to the municipality.”
They also complained that they “are perplexed by the circulating scandalous video online”.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
