The Brooklyn Kerb Improvement Project is back under way in Brooklyn after it was delayed last year due to extortion attempts.
Last year on June 14, Ward 55 councillor, Fabian Ah-Sing announced that the project had been cancelled because “the contractor was approached by individuals in the area, threatening to hurt them”. Mr Ah-Sing said that the City could not risk the lives of the contractor and employees and a decision was made to scrap the project.
The City’s Mayco member for urban mobility, Rob Quintas, later said that the contractor was threatened and the safety of the employees was considered. And due to the threats made, the work was stopped. Mr Quintas also said that although the City would not risk lives, they were still committed to service delivery. He added that the City was committed to completing the project depending on safety (“Brooklyn project halted over extortion claims,” Tabletalk, June 28 2023).
The City did not want to disclose the figures of how much the project would cost saying that this was done in the interest of the safety of the contractor and its employees.
A number of projects in the Milnerton area have been targets of extortion recently. In May last year, road work contractors were threatened and robbed by armed criminals in Dunoon (“Thugs stall Dunoon roadworks, say officials”, Tabletalk, May 24, 2023).
Brooklyn residents were happy to learn from the councillor that the pavement project was back under way.
Mr Ah-Sing simply said: “I am happy to confirm, we took some precautions and the project is now being implemented”.
When asked by Tabletalk for more details about what the precautions were, he had not responded by the time this issue went to print.
Carol Long, a Brooklyn resident for 10 years, said that: “I am so happy to see that criminality will not win at the end of the day. It is quite refreshing to see in our country that our local government doesn’t fold under the pressure of criminals. Of course we also care about the safety of the workers. Having said that, we can’t let criminals win and take over our neighbourhoods.”
