Councillor begs community to stop dumping
FOURWAYS - The side of Witkoppen Road near Douglasdale has become a dumping site for rubble and other building waste.
Cedar Lakes resident, Mark Heaton sent the Fourways Review photographs of the large piles of rubble which line the shoulder of Witkoppen Road. “The rubble along the road is atrocious,” he said. “Who is going to clean this mess up?”
Ironically, this side of Witkoppen Road used to be a cause for concern among residents, not because of the rubble but rather because of the deep ditches on the side of the road. In November last year a vehicle careened into one of the ditches after a collision with another car and needed to be towed out of the crevice (‘Vehicle careens into ditch’, Fourways Review, week ending 22 November).
Ward councillor for Ward 115, Chris Santana, said that after numerous incidents like this and appeals from the public to do something about the dangerous ditches, he came up with the idea to fill in the ditches with rubble from the newly-constructed Northriding High School.
“I did the project in association with the Department of Education, Metro police and the Department of Roads and Transport,” he said.
After the ditches were filled with the rubble, contractors from the Department of Roads and Transport graded the area so that the rubble was level. “I made sure that the Metro police was visible on the day and that the rubble was level and safe so that no one thought it was illegal dumping,” Santana said.
“The irony of the situation is that directly after the ditches were filled in, the residents themselves started dumping on top of the levelled area.” Santana said that he had received lots of complaints about the dumping but he believes that residents are the ones who are doing the dumping.
“My question to the residents is, ‘How do you, as the community, want to solve this issue when the community is actually dumping the rubble?'”
Santana said that he is making an appeal to the Fourways community to keep an eye out and stop other community members from dumping.
“Ever since the levelled rubble has been there, residents think it’s a free-for-all and anyone can dump there,” he said. “The dumping is dangerous and unsightly but it is up to the community themselves to stop the dumping.”
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I thought this dumping has being done on purpose to fill the trench running along Witkoppen Road with intentions of widening the road to alleviate the heavy traffic in the area?