MAINTENANCE at Stellawood Cemetery has been welcomed by ward 33 councillor Mmabatho Tembe.
Last year Berea Mail reported on issues at Stellawood Cemetery, which included an abandoned and derelict building at the top of the cemetery, the fact that the grounds were littered and overgrown, and vandals had felled light poles and stolen fittings. Storm damage from October 2017 had also not been repaired in over a year.
Commenting on the latest developments at Stellawood Cemetery, Councillor Tembe said she was pleased that the wall which had collapsed in October 2017 had been patched and there seemed to be general ongoing maintenance of the grounds, which she hoped would last.
“I had received complaints about work being done on weekends at the Stellawood Cemetery causing a noise disturbance. The Department said the City had received public complaints regarding security and standard of maintenance within the Stellawood Cemetery in 2018 and one of the key issues identified was that the trees had not been maintained for decades,” she said.
Tembe said the Department confirmed that a programme of alien tree removal and general pruning had to be programmed using the Department’s 10 trees teams. In order to ensure that these Parks District teams’ routine maintenance was not compromised, a programme was put in place which set aside two teams to work on weekends, until the task is completed. Using the contractor route would have been too costly as no budget is available.
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“The Department said the first phase which took place between September to December 2018, removed large alien trees. The second phase commenced in February where trees were pruned and security in the cemetery improved. This work has been closely monitored by a coordinator. The Department apologised for the inconvenience caused by noise over the weekends and said it anticipated that the work would be completed by the end of April,” she said.
The Berea Mail article in November also focused on the Hime Road Cemetery which was one of the older cemeteries in the city, with graves from the turn of the previous cemetery. Councillor Martin Meyer said a mausoleum in the cemetery had been bricked up as people were sleeping inside it, and a building at the entrance on Umgeni Road had been destroyed by a fire. The municipality had sought permission to pull it down as it was a heritage building.
This month, Meyer said the building was still standing, and a gate, which had been erected this month to keep vagrants out of the cemetery, had been stolen within days of being installed.
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