Illegal dumping has raised the ire of the business community of Eastgate Ext 3, Marlboro.
They feel let down by city council’s alleged failure to stop the scourge, as no permanent action had been taken to stop it after they had handed in a petition in August 2013 at a meeting with some city council departments. They claimed to only have received an acknowledgement letter from the mayoral petitions committee of receipt of the petition.
The appeal included suggestions on how to curb the dumping, particularly along Impala Road. It stated that Pikitup’s occasional removal of waste was pointless as the dumping occurred soon after. “The road is an unsightly environmental mess, with waste pushed among the trees, the homeless living on the site and recyclers sorting out the waste at the roadside,” read the petition.
“Several suggestions to council to stop the dumping were ignored due to lack of interest or commitment from other departments involved.”
The petition further alleged that suggestions to the Joburg Roads Agency to install barriers and bollards, and for Pikitup and Metro police to use CCTV camera surveillance were ignored.
“A cheap solution of digging a trench to trap vehicle wheels to deter perpetrators from using the area has also been ignored, as well as the use of systems to control waste disposal from building sites by holding developers responsible for where their waste is disposed,” continued the petition.
It was claimed that Metro police wasted resources by assigning four officers daily to watch camera traps on the nearby N1 Freeway.
Region E’s Metro police chief superintendent Ignus Jona said the departments had responded to the concerns pending a full response to the petition. “We advised the business community of our resource limitations, the ineffectiveness of the R1 500 fines for illegal dumping, a lack of effective penalties for repeat offenders and a permanent solution to the scrapping of unroadworthy trucks.”
Details: 011 321 6354, ross-meldrum@telkomsa.net
