Not smelling of roses

The role of a community newspaper is to act as a “community watchdog” and, as such, journalists are often approached by irate residents from all walks of life and requested to highlight certain issues, good or bad.

Where journalists in the main-stream newspapers often get to write about exciting and interesting happenings and goings-on in our big cities and the rest of the world, we, the community journalists, are often requested to write about things that do not really rate as the highlight of anyone’s day.

I mean, how can photographing smelly streams of sewage really help to “make the day”? Yet it must be done.

As the watchdogs of the community we have a duty to highlight these problems and bring them to the attention of the relevant municipal departments.

Whether any significant or lasting action will be taken to solve the problem of the overburdened and inadequate drainage systems is a moot point. Unblocking the drains (even if only after a few days) always helps to alleviate the immediate problem and for this we are grateful to the workers that have to deal with the “stuff”.

Human nature tends to find us pointing fingers and not wanting to accept that we, the community, are often to blame for adding to the problem.

We know the sewerage infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate and overburdened, yet we continue to add to the problem by flushing “super absorbent – super thick” disposable diapers, sanitary towels, wads of newspaper, dead pets, a host of other unmentionable items and, sadly, even human fetuses down the toilets.

This all contributes to the drains becoming blocked up and when they spill their ugly contents onto our pavements, into our streams and dams, we cry “Foul!” and look past the role we each might have played in worsening this unhealthy state of affairs.

Surely it’s time we took responsibility?

It’s time to wake up and smell the roses instead of sewage!