FRUSTRATED with the proliferation of illegal dumping at three different sites in Khabazela Village, which lies a few kilometres away from Sunningdale, residents have called on the City to urgently intervene.
Community leader, Dumile Magaqa, said in one of the vacant plots of land on Ganyaza Road where illegal dumping had been taking place, concrete barriers were put up as a deterrent. However, a few days later, illegal dumpers moved the barriers in order to continue their dumping.
“Illegal dumping is now occurring on a regular basis. We are concerned as residents because not only is it damaging the environment, it is also affecting the values of our properties. In some cases, residents get so fed up waiting for the rubbish to be picked up that they set a controlled fire to reduce the waste but within days more rubbish has been dumped. At the moment there are three sites being used to illegally dump, the first is on private property on Avoca Hills Road. The second is one the road to the substation that supplies Avoca Hills and Khabazela Village with electricity and the third on a vacant plot of land on Ganyaza Road which is the main road to our area.
“Increasingly we are seeing building rubble and garden refuse being dumped in the area. We’ve also found discarded mattresses, asbestos roofing and other items being dumped. Last year we actually caught one of the illegal dumpers on Ganyaza Road who was getting rid of building rubble. When we confronted him he said he was working on a site in Newlands and was told to dump here because he wouldn’t have to pay any money at a dump site. It is deeply concerning that this was suggested because more and more illegal dumpers are following suit because they know they will get away with it,” Magaqa explained.
Most of the dumping he said was being done in the late afternoon or under the cover of darkness.
“We really hope the eThekwini Municipality will intervene because we don’t want this to continue and we fear that as it stands now, unchecked, this will continue and spread,” he said.
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