The R76 road between Viljoenskroon and Orkney is one example of what poor infrastructure service with no maintenance looks like.

This festive season if you will be using a vehicle to go home, using the R76 route that stretches between Viljoenskroon and Orkney, then you are in for one long bumpy ride. The potholes on this road are from start to finish and very deep.

Using this road means taking your vehicle for a check-up just to make sure nothing is out of place and that’s if you will be lucky enough to not crack your wind screen from going through all the potholes, you need to be a good driver to dodge the potholes, some drivers even opt to use the bypass on the side of the road to reach their destination without struggling.

The bypass sounds like a better option right but what will happen when there’s traffic, since its festive season those heading to Stilfontein, Khuma, Skomplaas and Orkney use the road to go home. All they can do is just cross fingers and hope that now elections are over, the R76 will get recognition and receive the maintenance it requires.

Minister Fikile Mbalula has introduced road infrastructures for Marapyane and Alexander and so far both these projects have been doing well to reach completion, Alex is near its opening but for the North West it’s a different story. Kanana not far from Orkney has one huge hole that becomes a dam when it rains. The worse part is, it’s right outside the gates of the clinic and complex, the two places that are frequently used by everyone on a daily basis, it has been years but no councillor finds the means to work on it, yet voting takes place.

Roads are important and require maintenance from the government regularly to avoid such disgraceful roads leading home. Is that not why we have ministers in charge of such? Then we fight for employment while it’s staring us in the eyes and ministers who do not see the need to come up with projects to fix the roads and create employment.