EDITOR – Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the increased amount of rubbish that has begun piling up along the major highways of the greater Durban area over the past couple of years?
In the 10 years or so that I have lived in Durban, I have never seen the amount of rubbish alongside the roads as is currently the case. One wonders if the city officials even notice the rubbish as they drive around town during their daily commutes? One also wonders how eThekwini can even hope to market itself as a major tourist destination when the major arterial routes through the city, such as the M13 and M19, are clogged with rubbish?
At least Sanral seems to be making a concerted effort to clean up the N2 and N3 and regularly has teams picking rubbish up off the verges. The same cannot be said for the eThekwini Municipality.
It seems that it takes a televised event such as the World Cup or the Comrades Marathon to snap the municipality out of its lethargy and force them to at least make a half-hearted attempt to clean up the sections of road that receive television coverage. Even then, rubbish that was collected at the time of the Comrades Marathon in June is still lying alongside the M13, with the bags slowly bursting open and resulting in the contents spilling out onto the verges again.
What is even more disturbing is that people seem to think it is okay to litter to begin with. It seems that there is a mentality amongst road users that as long as the rubbish isn’t in their vehicle, it’s no longer their problem.
Unless the ‘powers that be’ start running education programmes to inform people that it is actually not acceptable to litter and start erecting signage warning road users that littering is offence, the problem is going to get worse and occasional window dressing is going to be a waste of time.
Let’s hope that, with the Amashova cycle race around the corner, at least portions of the M13 might get a clean-up. But then who knows how long the bags of rubbish that are collected will be left beside the road so that we will be back to square one again?
Tired of living in a rubbish dump
Hillcrest
