There has been:
* no response from the Brakpan municipality,
* no proper response from the contractors running the landfill site, and
* no action by the Brakpan residents, especially those staying in Anzac (no organised meetings or protests).
On August 5, at 9am, I witnessed the further progression of what seems to be a business deal between the contractors running the landfill site and the squatters from the plastic camp.
The squatters seemed to have (what looked like) a meeting inside the Weltevreden Landfill Site and were given (or allowed) to take materials for building more squatter homes and plastic, and then leave towards the plastic squatter camp with it.
All of the above is illegal and, for health and safety reasons, a huge problem for the rate-paying residents of Brakpan.
This happens under the watchful speed trapping noses of the EMPD (they trap just a 100m down the road) who should be enforcing municipal by-laws.
It must also happen with the consent of the company running the Weltevreden Landfill Site.
For this reason their contract must be cancelled and tendered out to a company that can actually run and safeguard the dump site, for the sake of the people illegally mining it for gold and plastic (there must be a myriad of health problems as a result of no sanitation at the squatter camp and a monumental rat problem – black plague anyone?) and that of the rate-paying residents of Brakpan.
If the management of the Weltevreden Landfill site did not allow the illegal removal of stuff from the dump site, the plastic squatter camp with its health hazards of billowing plastic smoke and no sanitation, not to mention the increase in house break-ins in the Anzac vicinity, would never have existed.
Editor’s note: The Herald requested comment from the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality on August 6, but, to date, none has been received.
