NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2011

NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2011

VICTIM SUPPORT CENTRE
Hillbrow Police Station operates a Victim Support Room, where lost children and crime victims can have some privacy while they talk to detectives, receive first aid, wait to be collected and so forth. This facility gets worn out quickly, due to the heavy usage, and eventually the police appealed to the Community Policing Forum to assist in renovating the room.
A company in Parktown, Chartis Insurance, financed the repainting project, and a number of their staff came along to help with the painting. They also supplied a microwave oven, a folding cot and some other furnishings. Many residents of Killarney came forward with donations of toys, towels and other essential materials. As a result of this small but significant bit of community participation, the Victim Support Room is now cheerful and welcoming, as can be seen in the attached photos
Captain Magowa, the current commander of the victim support section, told us that the children who come in there now feel so comfortable that they don’t want to go home.
It’s unlikely that too many of us or of our children will ever need to use that facility, but for the hundreds that do need to be there, we have managed to make their traumatic experience a little more bearable. Those who contributed to this very worthwhile project can feel justifiably proud of yourselves!

BURGLARS ARRESTED
We recently had a shooting incident in Killarney, when three men attempted to break into the offices of Nedbank in Newtown Road. Nedbank’s security guards picked them up on the cameras, and alerted the police and their own response team. The police arrested two burglars, once of whom was shot in the leg. The third ran off across the motorway, and after being chased around Killarney by police cars for a while, he escaped through the premises of some buildings. The police now know his name, and are tracking him down. If you have any other information on this, please let us know.

CAR CRIME HOTSPOTS
The SAPS emphasise that theft of vehicles and theft out of vehicles are our most serious crime issues. The main hotspots are around the Mall, and at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 5th Street. The Mall is willing to provide secure parking on a monthly basis for residents, provided enough people are interested to participate. Please contact Wendy on wendy@interpark.co.za if you would like to rent safe parking.

FUTURE PROJECTS
At the recent AGM of the NKRA, the following new projects were approved:
• Community Workers Program – this is a government job-creation program, which has recently helped to clean up the motorway embankment, as well as build retaining barriers to combat soil erosion in 10th Street. They could do other things as well, and we will use them wherever we can.
• The intersection of 3rd Street and 4th Avenue is a serious safety hazard, due to the zig-zag in the road and the consequent blind corner. We are still pursuing a 4-Way Stop at this intersection, as well as speed-humps in 4th Avenue, in Main Road and in 1st Street.
• Potholes – JRA only repairs potholes which pose a certain level of danger on a road of a certain level of traffic density. We will investigate undertaking a touch-up of existing pothole repairs that are coming undone, and perhaps addressing some other potholes which JRA is seemingly in no hurry to address for us.
• Street cleaning – many people have suggested hiring sweepers to clean our streets, instead of waiting for the unreliable PikiTup service. We have discovered that disposing of the rubbish is by far the most expensive part of the operation. The NKRA will invest in twenty wheelie-bins, and will ask buildings to volunteer to host these bins and make them available to the NKRA sweepers. This would include putting them out on Tuesdays for the much-more-reliable PikiTup Wheelie-bin Service to remove the rubbish.
• Tree-planting – it seems that the huge jacarandas that bring so much beauty to our suburb, are starting to reach the end of their life-span, so we have requested City Parks to plant replacements. We will probably get stinkwood trees, which are indigenous, attractive to birds, fast-growing, paving-friendly and deciduous. Thusfar the suggested allocation is as follows: one new tree in the park to replace the deceased plane tree at the west end, one in 3rd Street outside Bretton Woods, one in 2nd Avenue corner 2nd Street outside Dukes Court, two in 2nd Street outside Dukes Court, and one in Riviera Road outside Mentone Court. If anybody else has ideas on locations, please let us know urgently.
• Taxi rank – the related congestion, littering and urinating in 1st Street continues to continue. We are working with JRA to find a solution, but it’s slow going indeed.
• Lighting – some patches of the suburb are very dark at night, which creates a safety hazard and makes the criminals bolder. We will produce a register of these “black-holes”, and will purchase extra spotlights to light up these areas. Specific buildings will be asked to volunteer to provide the electricity, and a wall to mount them on.
• We will also encourage specific buildings to trim back trees which are creating shadowed areas favoured by car thieves and loiterers.
• Traffic cameras and an extended traffic island will be requested at the corner of Houghton Drive and Newtown Road to reduce congestion, which is a road safety hazard as well as creating a mugging safety hazard.
• We will continue to encourage recycling and community participation in various ways.

In order to make our discussions and decisions more inclusive without holding meetings each time, and in order to get better and faster feedback from residents, we need to make better use of technology. If you would like to receive our communications, notifications and minutes etc by email, please send us your email details to wdford@global.co.za You can also keep in touch with events and issues through our website, at www.nkra.org.za

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Our newsletters are kindly sponsored by Nomsa Nene Properties.

(NOMSA NENE ESTATE AGENT (CRS) (PDE) (NQL4)(RPL) SECTIONAL TITLE SPECIALIST)
Email: Nomsa@neneprop.co.za I Website: www.neneprop.co.za | Fax to email: 086 617 4662
Office tell: 011 486 0569 I Office fax: 011 486 4698 I Mobile: 083 964 2665 4662