Sewage spillage and rubbish scare the clients away

Manie and Annemarie Botha, the owners of North West Refrigeration Electrical cringe every time a customer comes to the front entrance.

They say they have had to live with a sewage spill and uncollected rubbish next to their business premises on the corner of Nelson Mandela Avenue and Kings Street for a year already. To make matter worse, all the rubbish blows around in front of their business on a windy day. The road is also so riddled with potholes that no light vehicle can get through.

‘This is not good for our clients and is ruining the image of our business, dit is ‘n gemors,’ complains Manie. He says they have reported the problem to the municipality but their complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

Annemarie adds that there are people who pour car oil onto the flowing sewage. ‘We should not have to live like this,’ she says in disgust. Add to this the fact that the tenants in the Kings Hotel next door throw papers out of their windows and it is the stuff that nightmares are made of. Manie says someone even dumped two dead cats in a refuse bag on the street corner. ‘We could smell the foul stench while sitting in our store,’ he said.

The Herald got to experience, first hand, what the Bothas have to put up with during an interview on the premises. Two municipal garbage trucks went down Kings Street on separate occasions. At 09:48 one of them came through, stopped to pick up two refuse bags and a few papers lying on the street. Ten minutes later, another truck drove through and never picked up anything at all. The driver promised the journalists that he would send a team to sweep the street but, by 16:00, the street was still filthy.

The Bothas say they would be very grateful if the municipality would come up with a plan. ‘If they put a skip on the corner where people could dump their rubbish, it would already make a big difference and it would be easier to collect the rubbish,’ Annemarie concluded.

 Municipality’s comment: NW 405 responds to Kings Street complaints