Joburg Mayor joins environmental clean-up campaign in Diepkloof
"This is not something that we can do on our own, they have a role to play so we are saying they should start clean-up campaigns such as this.”
Over 80 university student volunteers of ASEZ joined by the City of Johannesburg Mayor, Mpho Phalatse and MMC of Infrastructure, Michael Sun on Sunday conducted a clean-up campaign at Extreme Park in Diepkloof.
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The campaign by the university student volunteer group of the World Mission Society Church of God aims to combat the effects of climate change and raise awareness in communities through clean-up campaigns.
“This is an awareness to show the community that through small steps we can actually keep our environment clean and that they too can participate.
“We are hoping to have a butterfly effect where we rope in communities cleaning and protecting our environment.
“It doesn’t have to be through a campaign but being mindful and understanding the role we have,” said Youth Leader for ASEZ, Lehlohonolo Makhokolo.
Mayor Mpho Phalatse said it was the collective responsibility of government and residents to ensure a clean environment revealing that the city was considering introducing fines for littering as one of the ways to drive environmental cleanliness.
“We are in talks with MMC David Tembe of Public Safety about introducing a littering fine however we don’t want to only deal with residents through fines, we want to educate them about climate change so they can understand the true effects on their lives and the environment so they can own the decision to be part of an army that is taking back our earth and restoring her.”
The Mayor stated that the city would be reviving and launching the A Re Sebetseng clean-up campaign, initially launched by the 2016 administration.
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The campaign set to launch later in the month in Soweto is to continue the message of climate change and global warming.
“Through the campaign, we will be going into different regions and educating communities on the need to keep the environment clean and mobilise them to join us in cleaning up the city.
“This is not something that we can do on our own, they have a role to play so we are saying they should start clean-up campaigns such as this.” she concluded.
According to MMC Sun, the City of Johannesburg‘s Pikitup spends R64 million every year cleaning litter and over R70 million every year cleaning illegal dumps. Sun said this was very a concerning indication of the dire impact of littering.
“This is the kind of money that we can save and redirected into other parts of service delivery.
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“But we thank such initiatives that are following the mayor’s call to say this is what we need to do to ensure that our communities and streets are clean so that our children and families can live in a clean environment.” he said.
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