Residents of Centurion continue to face growing uncertainty as sinkholes across the area worsen, with concerns mounting over insufficient funding and the lack of a dedicated provincial response team promised more than a year ago.
The sinkholes, which have disrupted communities, damaged infrastructure and threatened livelihoods for years, remain a significant challenge for the City of Tshwane. While the municipality has allocated R14 million for repairs, estimates suggest that between R300 million and R720 million is needed to adequately address the problem.
A year after the Gauteng Provincial Government pledged to establish a dedicated sinkhole task team to tackle the crisis, residents say little progress has been made and the promised intervention has yet to materialise.
According to Nicole Van Dyk, although the city has introduced some measures, including the appointment of geological profilers, there is still no dedicated funding allocation to deal with the scale of the problem.
"They've only got a plan for four sinkholes. There are around 5,000 sinkholes across the province, and 67 of those are in Centurion," Van Dyk said.
She added that preventative measures are not receiving sufficient attention, despite evidence that many sinkholes are linked to undetected water leaks.
"What was highlighted repeatedly is that proper leak detection could help prevent many of these incidents, as minor leaks often develop into the major infrastructure failures we are seeing today," she said.
The funding gap remains one of the biggest obstacles facing the municipality. Despite the extensive repair costs, Tshwane's current sinkhole budget remains at just R14 million.
Efforts by the city to secure a local disaster declaration, which would have unlocked emergency funding through the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), have so far been unsuccessful.
As a result, the municipality is largely left to manage the crisis using its own limited resources while residents continue to grapple with the risks posed by expanding sinkholes.
At the time of publication, the City of Tshwane had not responded to requests for comment.