FED up residents took to the streets in Woodlands to make a point to the Durban Solid Waste at the Glanville Garden Refuse Site on Saturday, November 6.
Their issues are with pickers who go through the disposed of rubbish to salvage whatever they can for money. According to the convener of the protest, Chris Lelong this has been going on for years.
He said after pickers are done with the rubbish, they usually leave it laying there which pollutes the street. The aim of the protest was to also hand over a memorandum to DSW officials who did not attend.
“They must have gotten wind of the fact that we would be protesting because a day or two before we got together, they cleaned the place up. They were obviously warned by someone to clean up,” he said.
Lelong said pickers stop the people who go to the refuse site on the side of the road and take the rubbish from them. He said although he knows they have to make a living, leaving a mess is unacceptable.
“They take what they want and leave everything else laying on the side of the road. This is why it looks so dirty outside the dumps.
“In our memorandum with the municipality, we’ve asked them to put cameras outside the site to fine the people who dump illegally. Judging by the number of people who came out to support the protest, the community is now tired of this issue,” he said.
Some of the demands made to DSW are to relocate the dumpsite, add more security personnel and for culprits to be fined. The memorandum signed by Lelong was on behalf of the communities of Montclair, Woodlands, Woodhaven and Yellowwood Park.
It was received by ward 64 councillor, Gavin Hegter, in lieu of DSW officials. He vowed to take it to the mayor’s office as the waste department was unresponsive to him.
“We’ve also had various role players from the municipality in various departments on site. The sad thing is none of them have made any effort. Nothing has changed, it has actually gotten worse.
“The community now feels threatened. When they come here, the pickers outside storm in the refuse site, they start grabbing stuff from their vehicles and it has just gotten out of hand,” Hegter said.
He said the community is now frustrated and want to take the law into their own hands, of which he advised the legal route instead. He added that protest was a way for the community to show its annoyance at the situation.
“At their request, I invited the head of DSW, I sent him numerous emails. He has not even had the decency to acknowledge my emails, let alone respond. I then escalated it to the deputy city manager, who is in charge of that cluster, yet again, not even acknowledgement of that email.
“So, it just shows the total disdain. These are people who earn over R1m a year but couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge the community they are being paid to serve.
“The community is actually paying their salaries. Instead of coming to address the community, all they did was give the loiterers a heads up to get them to tidy up so it does not look that bad.
“But it is just too little, too late, by the next day, it will be back to what it was. We cannot carry on like this, it is going to boil over and we’re going to have a nasty situation,” he said.
A comment from eThekwini Municipality was not available at the time of publication.
