Asking readers about security booms…

SUZANNE BELLING

The City of Johannesburg has vowed to remove all illegal booms across public roads.

There is a proviso, however, that residents may apply to have the booms legalised if, inter alia, they are not electronically operated, pedestrian gates are open 24 hours a day and there is free access for motorists, except under suspicious conditions.

The SA Jewish Report approached readers who gave their views. 

Eastern suburbs resident Lisa Joffe says that gated communities are acceptable, provided conditions attached to permission for closures are adhered to.“We can’t have a domestic worker, for example, walking an extra five kilometres because pedestrian gates are closed.“Security guards should be monitoring people walking through these gates,” she said.

Debbie Hirschowitz, of Sydenham, said that boomed-off roads definitely serve a purpose in bringing down the level of crime. “It has helped tremendously,” she said, “and we need the guards. I think that it’s a definite deterrent.”

Evelyn Green,
musical director of the Johannesburg Jewish Male Choir, who lives in a closed-off street in Orange Grove, said she was “dead against the removal of the booms and the 24-hour opening of pedestrian gates. “You can never know who is walking in,” she said. Green said the streets in her area were closed at night and over the weekends. “There is only one entrance during these times and everything is done to increase entrance security. “Personally, in addition to the road closures, I make sure that a guard from my security company is warned in advance and meets me outside my home when I go out at night.”

Yvonne Berger,
who lives in a boomed area in Glen Atholl – plus has extra security in her complex – wants the booms to remain. “I think this (proposal) is ridiculous and I am just hoping it won’t happen. Apart from the security problem it poses, they should consider the number of security guards who will be out of work. One has to bear this in mind. I want the booms to remain, in spite of the extra security in my complex.”

Sophie Hirschowitz
says the booms are up for a reason and to attempt to remove them is “most unfair. “What will happen if your leave pedestrian gates open for 24 hours?” She added that the booms should remain unless they were in a main thoroughfare. “The by-laws should change. They were probably written long before crime was so high.”

Ryan O’Connor predicts lots of resistance to the proposal because people would feel less secure. “I agree to an extent but don’t know if it is right.”

David Smith, who also lives in a boomed area, says it adds to a false sense of security, “but each individual, each family and each community needs to do what they need to do to ensure security. We are talking about life and death here,” he said.