Schubart Park residents file back

Tomorrow marks the end of the first round of registration for Schubart Park residents wanting to move back into the Tshwane metro-owned building.

In accordance with a Constitutional Court order the metro has arranged two rounds of registration for previous tenants of the high-rise building on the western side of the Pretoria CBD.

Former tenants, who lived in Schubart Park up to and before September last year, have since Monday been able to register to move back into the building Tshwane had planned to implode.

This was after Schubart Park and another metro-owned flat building, Kruger Park, were in April deemed unsafe for human habitation.

This was, in part, apparently due to vandalism that saw electricity supply points illegally reconnected, water pipes broken, staircase railings and other steel fixtures removed to be sold as scrap and blocked sewage systems caused by more than the legally allowed numbers of people living in the flats.

At that time metro management said the buildings, originally built as housing for government employees, would be imploded. This decision was set aside by the Constitutional Court and evicted residents, who formed the Schubart and Kruger Park Residents’ Committee, have been co-operating with council to find amicable solutions. This includes Tshwane metro repairing the building to a habitable and safe standard.

The current round of registration at the metro central region office in the Sammy Marks Building on the corner of Madiba and Sisulu streets will be followed by a second, at the same venue, from, January 14 to 18.