Some municipal workers undo good work
Everyone must work together to keep the town clean.
“The municipality is actually supposed to work with us against these offenders, but now they are part of the problem.”
These are the words of Mr Johan Knell, who accidentally caught municipal workers red-handed on Monday as they were dumping rubbish just outside Fochville.
Knell went to the area behind the Gert van Rensburg Stadium on Monday morning to search for historical items with his metal detector at about 12:00.
“I love going there, often just to get in nature take a break from my normal daily activities. As I was driving on the road into the veld, I saw a bakkie. I stopped but they continued to take rubbish off the trailer and dump it in the veld. I drove up closer and saw that the bakkie actually belonged to the Merafong City Local Municipality. It was only then that the men at the bakkie started to apologise for dumping the rubbish,” says Knell.
He says that the municipal workers were offloading boxes, bottles, papers and other rubbish.
“I asked them why they were dumping the rubbish there, and they replied that they could not get into the waste transfer station because the road was blocked by rubbish. This is not true as we, as the community, paid local companies to clean up that road last week,” says Knell.
Knell contacted another community member, Mr Corne van der Merwe, who in turn contacted Merafong’s Acting Public Safety Manager, Mr Philip Olivier. The same workers returned the same day to pick up the rubbish they had dumped.
According to Knell about a quarter of the rubbish that was dumped was still left afterwards, but it is not sure whether it was dumped before the municipal workers arrived.
“We want the municipality to take disciplinary steps against these workers, as having them pick up the rubbish is not enough. How can the community be expected to pay to keep our area clean, but some municipal workers mess it up again?” Van der Merwe fumed.
Van der Merwe was also part of the action to clean up the road to the waste transfer station last week. The community also paid to have the transfer station itself cleaned up earlier this month.
Meanwhile, even the community members working at the transfer station are hoping that the municipality will start to take a bigger interest in dealing with the Fochville area’s rubbish problems.
“We are so happy that the transfer station and the road to it is cleaned now. We really appreciate the fact that the community contributed to have the road and the transfer station cleaned. Every time we have contacted the municipality for help, they said that they do not have a TLB,” says one of the people working at the site, Mr Steyn Ramile.
“All we want is for this facility to work properly again, as everyone will benefit and it will make it easier for us to help with the cleaning and search for recyclables that we can sell. We do not want to make money we just want to make a living,” said another worker at the site, Mr Jovies Pheto. These workers stressed that they have been working hard for years to keep the site clean, as well as safe for people who want to dispose of the rubbish there in a legal and organised way.
“Internal processes were conducted and the area was cleaned immediately,” the municipal spokesperson answered questions about the dumping.
