The civil rights initiative AfriForum is to ask the City of Tshwane to rename other streets in metro instead of the initial 27 it intends to rename, it said on Thursday.

"AfriForum will request the council tonight [Thursday] during a public hearing on the renaming of streets to desist from the proposed renaming of 27 streets in Pretoria and rather to focus on the naming of unnamed streets in the metropolitan area," its deputy chief executive officer Alana Bailey said in a statement.

The public hearing relating to the changing of street names including Paul Kruger and Vermeulen streets will start at 6pm.

"Currently there are approximately 14 000 streets in amongst others Soshanguve, Atteridgeville West, Winterveld and Mamelodi East which have no names," it said.

Bailey said in not having names for these streets, residents' lives were at stake as ambulances and the police among others could not locate them.

AfriForum said it was ironic that the council spent money and its efforts in renaming the 27 when there were streets that had no names.

"Where the lives of people are at stake, it is heartless and administratively irresponsible to spend millions on an unconstitutional process to change existing names," said Bailey.

Sapa