Residents clean duck pond, find two dead dogs among rubbish dumped in pond
The park is being cleaned inside the Clear-Vu fence, but the metro fails to clean outside the park.
Three people regularly clean the fenced-off area at the George Sutter Park duck pond.
Selcourt Enclosure resident Hennie Brits, Frans Malela and Simphiwe Mbolanane are regular faces at the park.
Brits is amazed to see what people are dumping into the dam.
On Tuesday they removed two dead dogs from the water.
He says one of the dogs looked like a poodle but the other one was unrecognisably decomposed.
“People throw nappies, sweets’ wrappers, plastic and glass bottles, tins and bags into the dam,” he says.
They clean around the dam once a week.
The cleaning includes the cutting of the grass, cleaning the litter – not only in the dam but next to the fence -the trimming of trees when needed and the removal of weeds.
Brits says it doesn’t matter how hard they try to keep the park clean on the inside of the fence, it looks terrible on the outside.
“It is a popular park that is visited by families on weekends who want to have a braai while their children enjoy the playground.
The people at these gatherings leave litter lying around.
“However, the metro hardly ever cleans the park or cuts the grass,” he says.
The small dustbins are overflowing. The litter is also strewn all over the place.
“The wind probably blows the litter into the dam which contributes to the amount of litter being removed weekly,” he says.
Selection Park resident Kathy Preston, who feeds the geese and ducks at the dam, is delighted that Brits and his fellow workers cleaned the park inside the Clear-Vu fence.
“Parties are held over weekends and litter is left lying around,” she says.
Preston is concerned about the broken pieces of glass on the lawn.
She says children play on the grass and the glass can be detrimental to them if they step on a piece.
Despite sending questions to the metro, they had failed to comment at the time of publishing.
