Residents live in dump

RESIDENTS of RDP houses in Savanna Park at a place called Amawelewele have been left for almost four months now without their weekly rubbish collection.

The stench in certain areas in Amawelewele is indicative of the health hazard that people have been living with for almost four months. Even though some people get rid of their rubbish by burning it there are other areas where people dump their rubbish in the street.

Burning rubbish is also a risk to the community because of the fire hazard but the residents burn the refuse because there is no other way of getting rid of it.

There are some rubbish bags along the roads where sometimes small children play with the rubbish and spread it all over the road. Dogs dig into the rubbish bags looking for food and also spread it all over the streets. No-one has explained to the community why their rubbish hasn’t been collected.

“Before the rubbish truck stopped collecting our rubbish we never received any notices or heard any announcements why our rubbish was not going to be collected any more and even now we still haven’t received any explanations,” said a resident.

Nomvula Shembe, councillor of ward 17, refused to comment about this problem and said she would only comment after Joe Nene in the Mayor’s office sorted out the problem that they have but she would not specify what it was.

Joe Nene said he wasn’t aware of this problem and said they would look into it and request the head of the DSW department to intervene.

Nomvula was then asked again to comment as the councillor of the area and still refused and said she was not obliged to comment and still insisted that Joe Nene would be the one to give an explanation.

Communications officer of eThekwini Municipality, Thabo Mofokeng, said, “the matter is still under investigation and we are trying to find the solution to the problem.”

There is still no explanation why the rubbish has not been collected for almost four months.

In Nazareth, just outside Pinetown, residents also experienced the same problem as their garbage was also not collected for three weeks.

Nondumiso Shazi who resides in the area said they had to live like pigs for the past three weeks.

“Street corners were piled up with weeks of garbage, dogs have found a playground spreading dirty diapers all over the roads, this is not only an unpleasant sight but also a health hazard for young children playing in the streets and the worst part is we have no idea why our garbage has been left like this for so long as no notices have been put up or announcements been made as to what problems the garbage collectors are faced with, all we would like to know is if we have to carry on living like pigs,” said Shazi.

Nazareth’s waste was collected by DSW on Friday but residents said they still have no explanation of what went wrong in the first place.