Community says no to more death trucks

ACTIVIST, Desmond D'Sa, is adamant that the South Durban community does not need nor want a warehousing and logistics park for trucks taking up the only green lung in the area.

D'Sa said trucks were a huge problem in the area and not a day or week went by without a report of a truck smashing in cars of people returning home from work or taxis laden with learners either on their way to school or back. “Our community is being maimed and killed by all these trucks, we don't need more trucks coming onto our roads and into our area,” he said.

“Despite all the statistics of truck accidents or deaths through trucks, our government continues to support illegal trucking depots in residential suburbs or even EIA's in support of developing logistic parks,” he said.

D'Sa and his group, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, which has been instrumental in fighting the development of the Clairwood Racecourse site into a warehousing and logistics park with almost 2 000 more trucks per hour on community roads where people commute daily.

“Why would local and provincial departments of the environment give approval to the developer Capital Properties Fund to create another logistic park on the Clairwood Racecourse and destroy the only green lung left and leave us to breathe in the high levels of carbon dioxide? The South Durban residential area has the highest level of emissions from polluting industries, including high levels of vehicle emissions according to eThekwini Municipalities own data base,” said D'Sa.

He said the group expected a government voted by the people to protect the people rather than pollution and money.

“We hoped that common sense would prevail and that our families, homes and peaceful suburbs would be put first as ratepayers, yet the opposite has occurred where the good has been thrown out the door and individual interest has been elevated against the common good of a society who has built its own homes from scratch,” he said.

He said many people had lost their lives in accidents involving trucks, including high profile people such as Minister in the Presidency Mr Collins Chabane and 24 people who died in the Fields Hill accident in September 2013.

“What about 10 deaths from trucking in the residential area of Clairwood. We question the wisdom of our government to continue to perpetuate increasing deaths from these killer trucks on our roads. Is it not the time to stop them completely and bring on more rail. We as the South Durban Community are committed to fight this tooth and nail. We are not prepared to wait to be killed by trucks,” he said.

The group recently protested in Durban, where a final appeal against the development of the Clairwood Racecourse was handed over to a city official.