I don’t think you could find anyone along the Garden Route who is surprised that the damage to the road at Kaaimans Pass is used as the excuse for the failure to finish the road works between George and the White Bridge in Knysna by December 2006.

I refer to the quote from Kobus Visser of Element Consulting Engineers (Knysna-Plett Herald, 22 February 2006): “However, due to the flooding in August 2006 and the associated damage to Kaaimans Pass and the rest of the route…. (completion) is now only planned for June 2007”.

No one I have spoken to can recall any damage of consequence to the road from the Kaaimans to Knysna from this flood, aside from some minor damage on the Knysna Lagoon section.

So to boil it down, the excuse is “Everyone was working on the Kaaimans Pass repair so we had no other people to do the rest of the road”. Well then, how about hiring more people? Or passing on the opportunity of the additional work on the Kaaimans Pass and finishing on time what you had contracted to do?

Any regular traveller between Knysna & George knows only too well, that disorganisation, time wasting and the redoing of sections are the major reasons the job was not finished on time.

All of this would be merely extra inconvenience if the poor execution of the job had not come at such a human cost. It certainly appears that the inadequate temporary signage and/or marking of the road during the repair work could have been a major cause of many of the accidents that killed and maimed of a number of our Knysna neighbours and friends, as well as others. To be fair, the temporary signage and road marking has improved, but it should have been better from the start.

Not to discount the added probable factor in the accident of poor driving and/or speeding. (Quick road safety quiz: Do you know what a solid white line means? What side of the white line should you drive? What does a sign saying “60” mean? Note to contractor: Please remove the sign when the particular road work has finished. Nothing breeds contempt for speed limits more than ridiculously low limits.)

Let’s all drive smarter when the White Bridge to Knysna section is progress. Let’s see if we can have no one killed or maimed. And can our elected leaders and municipal employees be proactive in looking after the interests of Knysna residents by seeing that the work is done in the safest possible manner?