THE Kouga Municipality will roll out the first road of plastic in Jeffreys Bay within the next month or two – a first for Africa.
Not only does this new approach to building roads spell the end of potholes, but it will also create jobs and help save the planet.
At the launch of the project on Monday, March 11, Kouga Executive Mayor Horatio Hendricks, said the local authority would be taking hands with a Scottish company and South African civil engineering experts to build the first “plastic road” in Africa.
“The backlog in road repairs for our region is estimated to be more than R500-million. While Kouga is financially strong, we simply do not have the rates base to deal with this backlog decisively,” he said.
“The DA-led Kouga Council has, therefore, been looking for innovative ways of slaying this giant since taking power in the municipality in 2016.”
The search led Hendricks to Vicky Knoetze, a member of the Easter Cape Legislature who first introduced the idea of solving some of South Africa’s problems through plastic roads to the Provincial Legislature in 2017. The idea was, however, rejected by the ANC, who voted against the implementation of a pilot project.
She facilitated a meeting between the municipality and Scottish innovators MacRebur, whose plastic roads have already been put to the test in the United Kingdom and other countries across the globe.
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