We are writing this letter as concerned residents, we are concerned about the state of waste collection in our township. Since December our township has experienced a deteriorating state of waste collection that has resulted in increased illegal dumping. The whole township stinks because the private company responsible for waste collection is not doing its job. The stinking is so bad that you cannot open your doors and windows to let fresh air come inside.
Neighbours are now fighting each other as those who stay next to these sites try to stop others from dumping. Now you have a choice of sitting with waste in your own yard or dumping illegally. We have gone to every office we can think of and no-one is prepared to listen to us. I mean this brings into mind the whole issue of privatisation of municipal services; it is absolutely not working out.
Municipal services should not be privatised at all. Those who are supposed to deliver those services, end up giving us very poor service. The whole dumping issue starts with the fact that our dustbins are now collected once a week while it used to be twice a week and at times they don’t collect for weeks. So what will residents do with that waste? Obviously it gets dumped in open spaces. Some of these spaces used to be playing grounds for small kids, our kids have developed rashes and are vulnerable to other diseases related with waste disposal.
Obviously the private company is trying to save as much as they can, thus compromising our children’s health and environment. This private company seems not to have enough machinery to clear all these small dumping sites we have in our township and they don’t have enough personnel to collect waste more than once a week.
The whole issue of rodents is as a result of this waste, we never had the issue of rodents before but now we do. It is a big problem and becoming worse every day. These rodents won’t disappear as long as we don’t address the issue of waste collection.
The solution is very simple; we can kill two birds with one stone – environment destruction and unemployment. We put forward conditions that companies that do waste collection should increase the number of days that they collect waste; this will demand that they hire more people to do these tasks, and those employed should get full benefits like all ordinary employees. In this way there will be less people doing illegal dumping in the open spaces as we will know that ‘o malume’ are coming in a day or two, we will not have to wait the whole week or more. As this happens, our yards will have less dirt and rodents will not be able to feed and thus slowly disappear from our township. This solution will have an impact on unemployment which means more tax for government, more people paying for the service because of improved service and a good healthy environment for our communities.
Hope that those in power are listening.
Mpai Manaiwa and Tebogo Mokgope.
