EDITOR – All very well for the City to have grand plans for developing Durban (plans for City IDP – Berea Mail 15 April 2016), but if they don't have the structure and staff to maintain the proposed changes and development is there any purpose in their proposed plan?
Durban was once a proud City for families and visitors and Saturday morning excursions to the City were a highlight. However over the last few years, the City centre and surrounds have become filthy, overrun with beggars and pavement traders. Filth in the gutters, weeds growing on the pavements (Berea Road, one of the main routes into Durban, is a disgrace) and overgrown foliage on roadways (corner of Argyle and Cowey Roads a good example where overgrown bushes obscure all road signs), black bags of rubbish left on pavements for days before being collected, all add to the bedraggled state of our once beautiful City.
Have we earned the right to be called “Dirtbin”? If structures that were already in place are not being maintained, what hope for grand new plans? In a couple of years, having spent millions of ratepayers' money, will there be more dirt and decay in “trashopolis”?
Fix and maintain structures already in place and return Durban once more into City of which we can be proud.
Marge du Plooy
Durban
