A public submission process has revealed that all previously rejected names have re-emerged.
|||The nine new street names which were rejected by the Supreme Court of Appeal are likely to remain on our city streets since all of them re-emerged during the public submission process which is due to end on Tuesday.
In December, the court set aside the names and ordered the municipality to return the old ones because of the city’s failure to conduct proper consultations in line with legislation in the renaming of the streets.
Since the process was revived last month,
the municipality has received more than 500 submissions.
The Deputy head of Geographic Information and Policy, Siyabonga Mngadi, who is charged with receiving the submissions, said the nine new names seemed to be popular with the public who had already made their submissions.
“All nine names have been submitted and they seemed to be popular. There are other names which are not really known, but people tried to justify why they chose them,” said Mngadi.
Municipal Speaker Logie Naidoo said even though he had not seen which names had been submitted he was optimistic the public would favour the nine names which had been set aside by the court. He said he would only find out which names had been favoured once the process had been closed.
He said the municipality would put up adverts before the end of February inviting members of the public to make objections to the selected names.
Deadline
The court had ordered the municipality to take down the rejected names within three months. The deadline is the end of February, by which time the submission process would be complete. He said the outcome of the process would determine whether the new street name signs would be taken down or not.
Naidoo said the previous name changing process had not fully involved the public because the full council had decided to speed up the process.
“It was felt that ward committees and councillors would be enough to represent people from various affected areas. But the court felt that we should allow the people to participate.”
Mngadi asked that those who still wanted to make their submissions should do so by faxing them to 031 311 4808 or by e-mailing senganik@durban.gov.za. - The Mercury