Residents take ward clean-up into their own hands

AS part of a cleaning campaign run by Ward 33 councillor Sakhile Mnagadi called ‘Keep 33 Clean’, residents came out to the streets of Ward 33 in their numbers to clean their ward together on Saturday, January 14. The local residents convened at Bulwer Park and dispersed throughout the ward, picking up litter and clearing rubbish in parks, roads and various street corners in the ward.

Ward 33 councillor Sakhile Mngadi said he was driven to organise this clean-up due to the unkempt state of the area. “For the past year, I’ve been receiving a lot of complaints about Durban Solid Waste (DSW) – we’ve all seen how our streets aren’t swept, and there’s an increased amount of illegal dumping, and generally the state of the ward is mostly a mess. And despite my best efforts, the streets are still not clean. One of the things I’ve always been passionate about is to get my hands dirty, and I thought it would be a good idea to make sure that everyone in the ward takes responsibility for their area, as well,” said Mngadi.

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Mngadi encouraged residents to take matters into their own hands. “The City can only do so much, and we can’t be living in this state while we wait for something to happen, which is clearly not coming fast enough.”

DSW was also involved in the weekend clean-up, providing trucks to collect the rubbish that was gathered.

Mngadi said that Ward 33 residents really showed up for the improvement of the state of their ward. “I’m very impressed by the turnout today, but Ward 33 residents were starting to clean up their surroundings the week prior to this. There were a lot of people coming out and doing small clean-ups of their local parks. And that’s exactly what I wanted – if everyone could clean, even just outside their own homes, then the entire ward would be clean.”

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