Tshwane metro mayor Randall Williams has urged residents to work together with the municipality to keep the city clean and attractive to investors.
“The City needs a partnership with the residents as we can’t do it on our own,” Williams told Rekord on Friday during a Tswelopele clean-up campaign, known as Tswelopele Action Fridays.
The monthly mayoral clean-up drive, which saw more than 40 people including the city employees and community members taking part, took place opposite Kolonnade shopping centre in Montana, north of Pretoria.
The mayor believes a clean city will have an economic benefit to residents such with the creation of job opportunities.
He said the residents should help in cleaning up the city in order to make it beautiful and attractive as such exercise would portray the Tshwane metro as a well-functioning city.
He said that the city would attract investors.
“The moment the city is clean, investors will see a well-functioning city that is suitable for their investments,” he said, adding that attracting more investors would lead to more employment, especially for the youth.
He revealed that the city did not have enough capacity to keep all its wards clean alone.
“We don’t have sufficient resources to cover the whole city of 107 wards,” he said, adding that they, therefore, needed assistance from the community to make the entire city clean.
“The more community participation we have, the better we will achieve an ideal situation of having a clean Capital City.”
He said Tswelopele was about encouraging people to take pride of the environment they live in.
“Once you get a clean and healthy environment, you find that people are pleased with their living conditions as they will enjoy living in a clean area.”
The event was also attended by Region 2 head councillor Abel Tau who echoed the mayor’s sentiments.
“This is about cleaning up our living spaces,” Tau, who is also the MMC for human settlements, said.
He said they participate in the event to encourage the community to come out and clean their spaces in order to be proud of their city.
Ward 5 councillor Arnold van Niekerk said the clean-up was a sigh of relief for residents.
“This has been a problem area for several years and I am happy that it has been cleaned,” Van Niekerk said, citing the cause of the problem as illegal dumping and the homeless who lived there.
He thanked the mayor and all the role players for making the area look good again.
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