Lesedi is struggling as one of the smallest local municipalities in Gauteng to meet the strain on its budget when services must be provided. Heidelberg Hope NPC, through its partnership with local business and community forums, initiated various projects to improve the standard of living through the sustainable maintenance of essential infrastructure. Our focus is on:

• Repairs to road surfaces damaged by increased traffic, lack of maintenance and storm water management.
• Painting of road markings.
• Replacement of critical road signs
• Repair and maintenance of side walks damaged by contractors installing services such as optical fibre.
• Repairs to public areas such as parks and playgrounds.
• Maintenance of our cemetery.
• Maintenance of and reconstruction of the public sport facilities at the Unie Fields municipal sport grounds.
• Provision of emergency water supply during frequent outages in Heidelberg.

Our flagship project is the repairs of potholes in the Heidelberg commercial, industrial and residential areas. It is an expensive but very important project that impacts on the lives of everybody in our town. We fund the project through a model of “user pays” where a business, or group of residents will get together to raise funds to fix a specific road.

To save cost and enable us to fix as many potholes as possible with the limited resources to our disposal we had a local resident forma reputable civil laboratory to design the asphalt mix most suitable for our local conditions. All material is bought in bulk and mixed by our members. 

A trailer, carrying all the equipment and material, was sponsored by Conqueror Off-road trailer and the LDV that is used by the AutoCity Group. This is just one example of business getting involved in improving our community.

The pothole project has been running since April 2022 and after the initial teething problems of getting the correct asphalt mix, making sure our teams are mobile, proper supervision and gaining experience, we were able to repair approximately 2700 potholes. Our biggest constraint currently being funding.

Our team can repair 30 units/day, depending on traffic and weather conditions. 

While our team is out and about, we replace street signs and paint markings that is critical to the safety of road users in Heidelberg. This is just one example of a function legally required by our local municipality but neglected due to resource shortages.