Child labour? When ubuntu backfires
Is community unthankful or was councillor oppertunistic?
A recent clean-up project by Councillor Dave Dewes seems to have backfired.
Dewes invited members of the community to sacrifice 27 hours of their year to help uplift lesser fortunate communities. As part of his 27-hours project Dewes, members of the public and local businesses cleaned up and brought a greater degree of formalisation at the Roodepoort Rugby Club informal settlement.
Some members of the settlement are not happy with Dewes and the project though. They accuse him of exploiting children for child labour, politicising the project and not consulting with the community.
Spearheading the disgruntled group of the community is Manie Mbuli who claims to be a member of the Ward 70 Committee although Dewes denies that she is. Mbuli explained to the record the group’s reasons for their unhappiness.
“The councillor never consulted with us. This is not how it is done. If he had a project he should inform the community,” says Mbuli.
“The community is also upset that no workers from the community were hired to help with the project and the fact that children were paid R5 for every bag of rubbish they collected”.
According to Dewes the work was all done by volunteers and businesses and their employees who volunteered their help. On the day of the project he also told the record that it was ironic that only some of the community who were being helped, volunteered to do anything. The majority chose to laze around in the shade.
“It is not easy to incentivise the adults to help clean up their own community. Yet I always have believed – show people what is possible and the nay-sayers will eventually contribute. Walk the talk. The children were paid R5 per bag. As far as we believed this was a perfect opportunity to teach children to take ownership of their community and be part of the clean up,” says Dewes.
Mbuli and her group is adamant though that they would have helped if people didn’t wear DA shirts and DA banners weren’t put up. She also said that she is busy escalating the child labour charge on behalf of the unhappy parents.
Dewes commented that “meetings were held in the informal settlement on more than one occasion promoting the event. I can’t force people to participate, yet I am adamant that I will never stop trying to improve people’s lives. This, through positive initiatives, instead of negative baseless criticism without any solution. Yes this is political. Your DA Councillor does not make promises like the ANC who committed to installing VIP toilets and extra stand pipes, but failed to deliver on either, a year later.
One person who was involved in the project but wanted to stay anonymous, told the record that his “blood was boiling” and that he was flabbergasted by the group’s ingratitude.
