WATCH: Entities spruce up the ‘Jewel’
“This is the first step to clean up the areas around the dams so the litter doesn’t get blown in them even more.”
Clean Projects Benoni and other community organisations, including AfriForum and Heart of Benoni, joined forces to spruce up the area around the stream running between Middle and Civic lakes on October 19.
This collaboration started on World Clean-Up Day last month with the removal of litter on the shore of Civic Lake in Tom Jones Street.
This time, the organisations removed the litter, cut the grass and cleared the dense bush in the open space between Bunyan Street and the N12, while AfriForum placed rubbish bins near the traffic lights.
Clean Projects’ Alison Etherington said they were motivated by the ‘big call’ to try to clean up the areas around the community’s water bodies and the fight against the invasive hyacinth.
“We are not there yet. This is the first step to clean the areas around the dams so the litter doesn’t get blown in them even more,” Etherington said.
“We started on the Tom Jones Street side for World Clean-Up Day. We realised that this side was also bad, so we decided to return and finish what we started.”
The clean-up attracted many community members and organisations, all fighting to return Benoni to the jewel it once was.
“We love Benoni. It used to be the jewel of the East Rand. Now, motorists just throw out rubbish from their cars. It’s a mess. We want to uplift our town,” said Mary Zanker and Heather Griffen from Litter Bugs.
Safety
Natasha Zaayman of the Heart of Benoni lauded this collaboration, saying Bunyan and Tom Jones streets and Snake Road are entrances to the CBD, and they want to remove the stigma that they harbour criminals and vagrants intent on mugging and hijacking motorists and pedestrians.
“We are helping to clean the waterways. We are also opening the area so the vagrants can’t stay here. We don’t want people who use this area daily to worry about getting robbed or hijacked at the robot. If it’s clean and open, the vagrants won’t have a chance to hide,” she said.
“Everybody’s aware of the spiking on many highways. We don’t want it to come to this side to create another environment where they have a luring place to hide around.”
Festive plans
For the festive season, Clean Projects is creating Christmas Day deco from recycled materials and will decorate the Benoni Country Club Christmas tree and other things they will place around Benoni.
“If you want to make a decoration, come and join us on November 16 at the Benoni Country Club’s conference room. The week after that, we’ll start putting our decorations around Benoni,” said Etherington.
Also Read: NPO keeps Benoni clean
Also Read: WATCH: Clean Projects set their sights on the city’s youth
