Arbour Week is observed this month – a time to plant trees and pay special attention to the role trees play in it. Unfortunately, many trees in the Vaal are being felled.
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It doesn’t take any great powers of observation or calculation to realise that more than a 1000 of our municipal trees in Vanderbijlpark have recently gone missing (since the year 2000). If this sounds like an exaggeration, residents can take any three streets and one of our boulevards in their neighbourhoods and travel along them, counting the missing trees.
For example, in parts of Piet Retief Boulevard, over 80% of the trees are missing, likewise half the trees of Tanner Street are gone.
Then multiply your missing tree count by the hundreds of streets in our town.
The Emfuleni Local Municipality does not remove pavement trees, except when a valid reason has been provided, such as danger to property, obstructing vision for traffic, and so on. The removal of trees would be acceptable in some cases, if they were replaced by new trees, but this never happens.
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Recently, eight trees were removed along the Van Riebeeck Boulevard boundary of Herfsoord that will result in the rise in heat, noise and dryness to the property alongside it. But even worse is the fact that these trees were planted as part of the original historical development of the CBD, and as such this is the destruction of heritage in our town.
The legitimate removal of trees requires permission in terms of municipal regulations. Any illegal removal of trees borders on blatant vandalism of municipal property.
There are a number of treefellers in Vanderbijlpark, who readily carry out the requests of customers who have not obtained the necessary permissions. The Emfuleni municipality also needs to both inform these entrepreneurs that their actions are illegal and to control their activities by registering them with the relevant municipal departments.
