The article titled “ Florida a rubbish dump” in your 28 July edition resonates well with me.
I reside in Witpoortjie and the same can be said. The busy streets like Dirkie Uys, which obviously attract lots of traffic are often left unswept by the waste management entity for long periods. It defies common sense and logic that busy streets should be overlooked for routine daily cleaning and picking up of litter.
Our major problem is around Princess Primary School where children litter everywhere. I am well aware of other residents who have expressed their misery about the littering around the school. I have spoken to councillor René Benjamin who promised to look into the matter, but that has yielded no results.
The issue was also escalated to the Gauteng Education Johannesburg South District Director, Dennis Macuacua, to whom the Princess Primary School’s principal, Mr Sithi, reports, and the issue doesn’t seem to go away.
In fact, councillor René promised to engage with the school management to assist in coming up with intervention strategies.
I don’t know if those engagements materialised as the litter keeps piling up around the school yard. There was a time when the school would assign cleaners to pick up the litter outside the school yard, but that has since stopped.
Pikitup workers only come once in a while to pick up litter. Yes, I would like to agree with Florida businessman Louis van der Merwe who alluded in the said article to the fact that there appears to be poor planning where such basic service delivery issues are neglected. This is a simple and straightforward matter to deal with, identify problematic littering areas and devise a workable strategy to keep our environment clean.
