Gone are the days where flushing brides walked the lush green carpet with their entourages, to pose for their wedding pictures in the public open space.<\/p>\n
“Gone for now perhaps, but not forever,” parks manager Ms Dalene Lamprecht counters the complaints received by numerous residents on the state of the gardens.<\/p>\n
Ms Lamprecht says the problem is temporary, and the gardens will return to their normal tranquil beauty, once the construction work on the facade of the civic centre is finished.<\/p>\n
“Builders have disconnected the sprinkler system which is fed by a municipal borehole, with the prevailing drought, I will not give the go ahead for municipal water to be used to beautify the gardens,” she told the Observer on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
All flowering plants have been removed from the front of the civic centre where construction is underway.<\/p>\n
Sadly, nothing can be done to recover the towering palm trees, which were set alight by municipal workers on strike weeks ago.<\/p>\n
“The trees are luckily not dead and will have to recover naturally,” Ms Lamprecht said.<\/p>\n
A soil dressing was also recently spread on the lawns, which adds to the drab demeanor of the stately gardens.<\/p>\n
“We cannot water the lawns and the soil dressing makes it look far worse than it will look once construction has ended,” Ms Lamprecht guarantees.<\/p>\n
She says a recovery plan is already in place to get the gardens picture perfect, once the borehole is reconnected to the sprinkler system.<\/p>\n
“It is presently a matter of saving a precious resource, water,” Ms Lamprecht said.<\/p>\n
According to her, its a small, and short term, price to pay.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a number of parks employees announced a go-slow over “unfair employment procedures”.<\/p>\n
According to one of the workers, a former municipal employee who resigned in December last year, applied for a new municipal job, was shortlisted and attended an interview last week.<\/p>\n
The position for senior pool supervisor was advertised and interviews indeed took place last week, though an appointment has not been formally made.<\/p>\n
A number of grievances was however submitted against the man’s application and possible appointment.<\/p>\n
“We feel that workers able to fill the position have been overlooked, and this man, who resigned out of his own free will, will be unfairly favoured,” the worker said.<\/p>\n
Acting municipal manager, Mr Mandla Mnguni, was unavailable for comment, due to his involvement with a workshop in Pretoria the entire week.<\/p>\n
Send a message to our SMS line 37 940 or add us onto Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> to receive your free daily news updates.<\/p>\n Also check out our Video\u2019s<\/a> on Youtube<\/a> daily!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The gardens of the civic centre these days resemble a wasteland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":36649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Gerhard Rheeder","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}