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Coffin carried far due to muddy roads - VIDEO

───   LUCKY NKUYANE 14:27 Thu, 25 Feb 2021

Coffin carried far due to muddy roads - VIDEO | News Article

The bad state of roads in Mangaung, which include Bloemfontein in the Free State, has forced desperate residents to carry a loved one's coffin for quite a distance to the hearse in the main road.

This follows after localised flooding in the area. The residents of phase 9 in ward 46 are seen in a video, captured on Tuesday, carrying a white coffin over the muddy roads. The stepfather of the deceased child, Lethola Maliehe, tells OFM News that the community has struggled with this for many years, especially during rainy conditions. He says for years they have been seeking help from the local municipality but their calls always fell on deaf ears. 

Maliehe says a provincial ambulance also became stuck in the area and could not reach them minutes before his stepson passed on.

In 2020, another provincial ambulance was stuck in the mud in the same area with a patient inside. Maliehe says many meetings have been called to try and address the issue of the bad roads but no-one seems to care about the residents. 

He adds that, to date, residents still drink underground water from a farm owned by the provincial government. He says residents took it upon themselves to connect a pipe from the farm and from that pipe every resident joins theirs to have water. He has described their living conditions as painful and calls upon the authorities to visit the area to establish what is happening there.


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